Switching to english with my compliance and ethics blog

I am switching to English with this blog, so more visitors can understand my notes. I am seeing that many of the visitors are from North America, too. Welcome! I hope it will give you some useful observations about the corporate compliance and ethics environment in this part of the CEE region.

My mission as a compliance professional - of which this blog is an important part - is to share my observations and knowledge from over 6 years of experience in building compliance program from scratch in the Slovenian based corporation. I hope to help advance the compliance and ethics profession development in Slovenia and give some orientation points to the beginners in the field, as well as possible business / professional observers from abroad. Namely, the state of corporate compliance and ethics is a strong definer of the market in general; in terms of stability, maturity, competitiveness etc...

This is the translation of the titles of my previous blogs:
1. The beginning of this diary
2. Do we understand risks or rather feel them
3. What does honesty mean to me
4. What does a compliance do in a corporation, as a governance function?

When I started my compliance job in late 2007, most of corporate professionals and managers in my environment didn't know about compliance and ethics programs at all.

For few years now, compliance function is already present in banks and most of the insurance companies in Slovenia, because of the two EU directives, commonly referred to as Basel 2 and Solvency 2 directives. These directives are recognizing compliance as one of the key functions in the system of governance and are obliging financial sector companies - through the local legislation - to have it embedded into their governance structure.

Some companies from pharma, telecommunications and manufacturing ... sector also have compliance programs, due to the influence of their multinational principles. Most Slovenian managers and directors nowadays know that compliance and ethics are special discipline and ever more present part of corporate governance. There's more recognized link to corporate ethics, too.

Not long ago ethics was taken as something that doesn't really fit in a serious business conversation; not so much because it wasn't considered important, more of underestimated, and definitely not something you manage or have to implement. Today, corporate ethics and integrity is highlighted and talked about a lot.

What is happening now in Slovenia for the last year and some is that several civil and professional organizations started to form initiatives and working groups (of most of which I am an active member) exactly for promoting, educating and good practices sharing about compliance and ethics, using international standards and best practices.

I am just finishing giving an interview for the Compliance and Ethics Professional, the magazine of the mainstream international corporate compliance and ethics organization, the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE). It covers exactly this topic in more detail and I will post in my blog after it's published in the Magazine first.

Andrijana Bergant,

strongly convinced that a compliance as a business function will mark the future of Slovenian corporations’ governance, and that ethics will become something tangible in terms of business; usable in the process of serious business decision making.