Find out about the compliance profession and how the Australian Compliance Institute evolved to help professionals and organisations build robust compliance frameworks.

Our Compliance Profession Journey

When the Australian Compliance Institute was first established, no one really knew how the compliance profession would evolve.

At first it was regarded as a somewhat temporary role to assist organisations with getting their house in order as a more mature principles based regulatory regime began to be established, both here and internationally.

It quickly became apparent that the complexity of the task and the increased and ever-changing regulatory requirements had not been fully appreciated organisationally, and permanency about compliance roles became the norm.

The benefits of appropriate regulation and robust compliance frameworks within organisations proved their worth during the GFC and the beginnings of understanding the value of a systematic approach to compliance began.

Those who had been undertaking these roles with great success identified the need for a conscious profession building process to be established. There is a maturity arc in all professions, and the compliance profession is no different.

The Australian Compliance Institute, having been established at the beginning of this cycle, was the obvious vessel through which to develop and deliver the education that would be necessary during each stage of responsibility in a compliance professional’s career, and would be especially useful, as teams needed to be built and organisations needed to recruit outside the then, small pool of experienced professionals.

Registered Training Organisation for Compliance Professionals

The multi-level Australian Compliance Institute courses were created after identifying the distinct essential skills, knowledge and qualities needed by compliance professionals at several points in their career:

• Compliance operations
• Compliance leadership
• Compliance thought leadership

To add further value for those undertaking training with the Australian Compliance Institute, the organisation established itself as a Registered Training Organisation and had the courses accredited within the National Training Framework, so that graduates could not only obtain recognition by the Australian Compliance Institute, but nationally and internationally with a recognised qualification.

Understanding that our compliance professional members also have responsibilities across specialised areas of compliance like AML, we added further courses to our scope as an education provider, so that members could be assured of the quality of content and consistency of approach to managing compliance risk.