Integrity and Compliance

What EY can do for you

Integrity and Compliance services

Integrity is at the core of contemporary business and this means not only doing what is legal, but also doing what is right. We work with companies to design, assess and improve their compliance programs focusing on the right governance models for their organization and enabling the team to be strong business partners working to prevent violations of regulations and laws. Many companies are looking to modernize their programs and leverage technology to deliver better insights and realize efficiencies.

EY helps you to:

• Assess the strengths and weaknesses of your compliance management and culture
• Review and analyze big data to assess your compliance exposures
• Implement an integrated Business Integrity and Corporate Compliance framework
• Reduce the compliance risks of doing business with third parties, suppliers, agents and other business associates

EY teams help organizations improve the effectiveness and sustainability of their integrity and compliance program. EY professionals help support assessment and strategic compliance projects as well as full range compliance program advisory campaigns. Specifically, EY teams can provide: 

• Compliance risk assessments to assist management in identifying and prioritizing the company’s significant integrity and compliance risks, including emerging issues.
• Integrity and compliance performance assessments that provide an independent assessment of the design of the company’s compliance infrastructure, including the compliance function, structures, people, processes and entity-level controls. This assessment compares compliance infrastructure to leading practices and identifies improvement opportunities.
• Integrity and compliance program improvement to assist in developing and implementing a plan, as well as core elements and initiatives to mitigate specific compliance risks or to strengthen a company’s integrity compliance infrastructure.
• Integrity and compliance sustainability and monitoring to support management in developing and executing a plan to evaluate and monitor the operation of the company’s controls to manage compliance risks, as well as integrating integrity and compliance in the day-to-day business operations.

Using Forensic Data Analytics and eDiscovery technologies, EY teams build analytics platforms and advise on the use of technology to help compliance teams gain better access to data to enhance and modernize their compliance program. For example, EY teams can help companies assess and enhance their culture of integrity by leveraging the latest in behavioral science research and applying leading data science to help them better understand the behaviors that strengthen their business, protect their brand and minimize costly business disruptions.

Whistleblowing services

A whistleblowing program is not just window dressing. It is a fundamental part of ethical business conduct, designed to foster an environment where everyone feels safe, respected, and able to speak up. An estimated 49% of fraud cases are detected by tip-offs¹

It’s not as simple as just putting in a hotline. While the system you choose to operate is critical, organizations must also take steps to ensure that both whistleblowers and the concerns that they raise are triaged, managed, and resolved in line with both national and international laws and regulations.

At EY, we help organizations to develop and implement the right whistleblowing systems to manage fraud risks and to build a stronger culture of trust and integrity.

EY teams can help you to:

• Design and implement an end-to-end whistleblowing framework
• Review the effectiveness of your existing whistleblowing process, including comparisons with prevailing regulations and industry best practice
• Provide triage and investigation support during a whistleblowing incident
• Implement EY Managed Services offerings (including the EY GDPR- and EU Directive-compliant cloud-based services or the EY speak-up app) or make recommendations for an external whistleblower hotline.

EU Directive on Whistleblowing: a global issue

As of 17th December 2021, the EU Directive on Whistleblowing requires every company or public body in the EU that has 250 or more employees to implement its own internal reporting policy for whistleblowing. By December 2023, this number reduces to 50 or more employees. 

This affects not only EU companies. Multinational organizations operating in Europe that apply a single, global whistleblowing policy must decide whether their current system fits with the EU’s exacting requirements. And if not, they need to assess what needs to be done to comply with both EU and national legislations.

For more information on the EU Directive and to help ensure that you are compliant, please contact us.