Live from Montreal: Hitting All the Right Keynotes

LIVE FROM THE CONFERENCE

Allan Bachman, CFE
ACFE Education Manager

“Bonjour” was as far as ACFE President and CEO James D. Ratley, CFE, would take his French in greeting attendees at the 2013 ACFE Canadian Fraud Conference in Montreal. “You’ll find soon enough I have difficulty with English,” he joked when kicking off his session on professional skepticism. Using his trademark combination of real-life examples, including fraudster video interviews, and humor, Ratley kept the attendees' attention throughout. His advice: Assume nothing, always have facts to support your findings and always seek to know more.

Andreas Pohlmann, Monday’s luncheon speaker, has his work cut out for him as the recently appointed chief compliance officer for SNC-Lavalin. Pohlmann spoke on the issues of compliance, maintaining an ethical environment in an organization and the difficulties of getting a company that has strayed back on the right track. “The key to change is leadership,” Pohlmann emphasized before he described leadership’s role in prevention, detection, response and eventually improvement. “Today clean business is our business.” He closed by reiterating, “People are our greatest resource – in particular when it comes to compliance.”

Tuesday kicked off with an ACFE favorite from the recent 24^th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference. Chris Mathers, a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police undercover officer, described the current fraud climate in Canada. He pulled no punches in his comments about how white-collar criminals are treated lightly by the Canadian judicial system. He used humor and stories from his career to make his points about bribery and corruption. Chris was complimentary of the ACFE and the attendees of the conference, saying they were the “pointy end of the stick in the fight against fraud, and it’s working.”

Lunch on Tuesday continued the strong general sessions with Ed Rosenberg, VP and chief security officer for the BMO Financial Group. Rosenberg pointed out, “There are no boundaries to financial crime. The world is the stage for financial crime now and may not be fully prepared for what is happening.” He sees his role as “criminal risk management." Quoting the ACFE’s 2012 Report to the Nations statistics on criminal background and detection, Rosenberg laid out the cold, hard facts of financial institutions' annual payment card fraud losses that were incurred in Canada alone and the net of recoveries: $500 million a year, an amount so large attendees found it hard to believe. These losses are all absorbed by the banks, and deterring these attacks is a top priority. He closed by discussing several measures they are taking to identify potential threats before they metastasize into real losses.

The ACFE Canadian Fraud Conference is a sum of its parts, and the Pre-Conference on data analytics, as well as the breakout sessions and the gracious host city of Montreal, have been extremely well-received.

Ethics and Compliance Top Management Priorities

INTERVIEW WITH ANDREAS POHLMANN

Chief Compliance Officer at SNC-Lavalin and keynote speaker at the ACFE Canadian Fraud Conference in Montreal, Sept. 8-11

You recently accepted the position of Chief Compliance Officer at SNC-Lavalin. How important is the role of a compliance officer in today’s current business climate?

The business environment is becoming more and more complex, especially for globally-operated companies. I see the chief compliance officer of a corporation as a key function within an organization to ensure ethics and compliance. The compliance officer’s job is to promote an ethics-based company. Companies are confronted with difficult situations where they have to react and resist, and the compliance officer’s support and advice enables employees to behave in the right way. The chief compliance officer is a trusted advisor to the organization; he/she is involved in day-to-day operations to enable employees to do the right thing under varying circumstances.

What is unique about the group of fraud-fighters you will address in Montreal?

This is a very professional group of people that is engaged in fraud examinations and investigations and would like to learn about the interface to the compliance function. Compliance officers are not necessarily investigators, but we all need to work together. Fraud examiners and investigators have to cooperate with compliance officers and vice versa. To learn from each other is a valuable step forward. There are three columns in a compliance program: prevention, detection and response. The middle function of these, detection, is where all of the functions come together.

What do you most hope attendees will take away from your keynote address?

I would like to talk about ethics and compliance as a top management priority. This means that the compliance function can only be a support and can assist in getting to a culture of high integrity and compliance in an organization. I would like to convey that ethics and compliance in a globally-operated company is a management task. The tone from the top is decisive and how you see your president or management conveys the tone in an organization. We all have to look into the cultural issues of an organization. What is the overall environment? Where are the people living? What are the drivers and incentives? You want to get to the hearts and minds of people to help them live up to the expectation of the management team.

Read more about Mr. Pohlmann and other keynote speakers at this year’s ACFE Canadian Fraud Conference.