Call Accounting Featured Article

Be Proactive in Understanding, Addressing Regulations

  By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC

Regulation often gets a bad name, especially in business circles. So it’s useful to remember that regulation can be a very good thing.

It safeguards our money. It works to make our food and water supplies safer. It protects us while on the road, in the sky, and at work. And it can serve to make our data and networks safer from those who would use our information and connectivity to annoy or threaten us.

You know that FDIC acronym on your banking materials? It’s pretty important.

As you are probably aware, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was created by the 1933 Banking Act. U.S. politicians enacted the FDIC during the Great Depression to keep our savings secure and restore trust in the American banking system.

The Clean Air Act and The Clean Water Act have gone a long way toward ensuring businesses operate in a way that keeps our world suitable for human (and plant and animal) life.

And when you’re flying in a commercial airliner above 30,000 feet, it’s pretty nice to know that there are many rules and regulations in place that make air travel extremely safe. “The commercial aviation system in the United States operates at an unprecedented level of safety,” notes the Federal Aviation Administration. “During the past 20 years, commercial aviation fatalities in the U.S. have decreased by 95 percent as measured by fatalities per 100 million passengers.

“We achieved this safety record because the FAA continually evolved in how it approaches safety oversight – both in detecting risks and in responding to the risks identified,” the agency says.

Rules and regulations relative to data and networks also exist to protect all of us.

These requirements, particularly new ones like the General Data Protection Regulation and MiFID II, do create new costs and challenges for businesses. But businesses that are proactive in understanding such requirements, establishing strategies for addressing them, and implementing new processes and roles to manage all that will be best positioned to protect themselves and their customers and partners.