COVID-19 – the centre of attention in forensics

The new environment created by the pandemic could aggravate current and create new risks.

Companies continue to face significant financial, operating and strategic challenges due to COVID-19, and nothing is likely to change in the short term. For example, compliance specialists are facing their own issues in each of these areas. Many companies are tightening their financial belts, cutting compliance budgets, reallocating resources to meet current and short-term needs and generally trying to survive the crisis. From an operational viewpoint, most compliance reviews and valuations will have to be performed remotely, while international business trips, site visits, real-time interviews, collecting together printed documents and other stages inherent in these types of activities will have to wait.

And, finally, as we’re talking of strategic challenges, it is important to remember that in this period of great uncertainty, companies don’t have to make changes to their compliance structure, because other key changes may be more important for business goals and objectives. Furthermore, when facing supply chain breakdowns and other emergencies, companies may have to simplify or reject model procedures that would normally last days or weeks, such as new supplier or business partner acceptance. Nevertheless, even when working from home and with significantly reduced budgets, significant opportunities still exist to assess and improve corporate compliance programmes.