Overview
Compliance Management in India is Complex. A mid to large sized customer in India deals with a few hundred Acts and a few thousand Compliances. These include Licenses, Registrations, Permissions, Consent Orders, Renewals, Returns, Registers, Payments, Remittances, Challans among others.
In addition, Businesses are dynamic and constantly change. They add new markets, new products and new operating locations to their offerings. As a result, the applicability of Acts / Compliances also constantly changes. The Regulatory environment in India is also fluid. There are approximately 3,000 changes in a year. A number of these changes affect the Compliance obligations of an organisation.
Companies Act, 2013 has brought in provisions for criminal proceedings and Jail term for Directors / KMPs. It requires Directors to devise system for adherence with all applicable compliance and ensure that system is adequate and operate effectively.
SEBI Listing regulation also requires that Board shall periodically review the compliance report covering all applicable laws along with the steps taken to rectify non-compliance.
Today, Organisations in India struggle to provide the assurance as they operate in a highly ad-hoc, paper based and people dependent environment. As a result, they need external expertise to plan, manage, measure and report Compliance Assurance.
The above limitations and dependencies put tremendous amount of accountability on Compliance Officers to manage their Compliance Obligations and ensure that the Company Complies with the law of the land. Here are a few key challenges that they face on a day to day basis: