What the Compliance Technician Job Entails
The compliance auditor will look into their companies business practices from across the whole company down to the individual level, looking for waste, inefficiency, and fraud. Modern tools allow the auditor to track transactions and business events in real time, allowing for on the spot analysis of management strategies and real time modification of the practices, leading to larger company profit. Compliance officers will not only be able to identify the inefficiency and redundancies of a company, but also commonly will make suggestions as to how to better employ controls in the company's infrastructure, such as how information should travel, the process of making a transaction, and other such tasks.
General Duties as a Part of Compliance Careers
Because of these general duties that are a part of compliance careers, the compliance officer should have some technical savvy to best be able to utilize modern tools. College education usually consists of the main field needed for a company, typically finance, accounting or economics in the case of jobs in compliance. During this time, technical skills, such as using databases like SQL or Oracle should be learned, as well as basic programs such as office suites, email and internet programs. There may also be other systems that may be proprietary to a company should be learned, but that education will be handled by the company as required.
All told, the education of the compliance officer should consist of a solid education degree in an appropriate field, such as finance or accounting, along with the technical capabilities and knowledge gained in part through years of work experience. These are in addition to the general communication skills, meetings, email, reports, etc. that an average person will learn during their college years. Math knowledge is also the key, as there is a great deal of tasks which require complex mathematics. Many financial fields require that the employees responsible for tracking financial data possess a certification ensuring federal acceptance of the individual's qualifications. The compliance officer is no different, requiring certifications that are typically obtained through the course of their earlier career. Depending on their job requirements, these can include a CPA, CMA, ACCA and others.
Job Advancement
Just as in many other careers, job advancement as a compliance officer is through climbing the corporate ladder. However, the compliance officer is typically a higher rung in the ladder, with any number of career paths leading into it. Accountants and other like professions are typically the entry level starting point for financially geared compliance officers. Employees trained in legal areas may also climb the ladder to enter into a compliance position given appropriate on the job training.
Salary Expectations
Compliance officers can expect, once starting out in their new career, a median salary of $50 thousand dollars. This amount can vary between $40 and $70 thousand dollars for the majority of entry level compliance jobs. As the compliance officer becomes a more seasoned employee, this number can grow to about $90 thousand dollars all the way to $131 thousand dollars. In addition, compliance officers, like any other corporate employee, receive the same kinds of benefits: health insurance, 401K retirement funds, and so on.
Conclusion
Compliance jobs like this are created in order to regulate the world of finance, because so much money is being moved around, saved, and invested. Making sure that a company is operating at peak efficiency is necessary, which is what brings about the need for careers in compliance, including compliance technician jobs. A lot of on the job experience and training is vital for careers in compliance, and while education is often required in a similar industry, most compliance technician jobs simply require on the job training and experience to build the necessary repertoire of skills.
