The Compliance Revolution: How Compliance Needs to Change to Survive

Chapter 10Corporate Maturity

But the horses didn't want it—they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, “No, not yet,” and the sky said, “No, not there.”

—E. M. Forster, A Passage to India (London: Penguin, 1924), 316

This final chapter sets out the direction of travel and processes of change. The essential question for compliance is how to ensure change is effective and embedded. The answer comes from understanding the processes underlying change.

Corporate maturity is a framework for recognising embeddedness and explaining the processes that underpin continual, and sometimes revolutionary, change. It is an overall measure of compliance success.

What Is Maturity?

Maturity is a summative way of describing the quality of the internal compliance system of a firm or sector. It combines:

• sound ethics,
• embedded in corporate culture and conduct,
• led and overseen by good governance,
• towards positive consumer outcomes, and
• contributing to sustainable and resilient communities.

Maturity has a number of important values to regulation and compliance as the concept provides:

• A measure of overall compliance performance
• A direction of travel for all compliance activity
• An understanding of the key processes of change ...