Originally posted to Nasdaq.com –
Creativity, Community, and Compliance is a new podcast from Smartria about the power of creativity in the financial services compliance profession. In each episode, Smartria CEO Mac Bartine and Director of Partnerships Rebekah Gucciardo discuss how creativity can be used to solve problems, create new solutions, and foster a sense of community among compliance professionals. We will focus on making the complex and frustrating world of compliance simple to manage and easy to understand. To get a behind-the-scenes tour on what is happening in regulation and be aware of compliance best practices, check us out.
You will also hear from industry experts in the world of compliance, FinTech, and finance who will inspire and empower you to take your business to new heights.
Our first episode – Using Comedy to Make Compliance Compelling with Alex Egan – listen here: https://podcast.smartria.com/using-comedy-to-make-compliance-compelling-with-alex-egan/
Show Notes:
How do you engage an audience in a topic that may not be the most interesting? And how do you ensure that important information gets retained? You cannot force people to pay attention, but you can get creative about how to initiate a conversation, hook your audience, and retain their interest.
Alex Egan takes a unique approach when it comes to compliance conversations. On paper, Alex is the Director at Kaufman Rossin, a full-service public accounting firm, leading the regulatory compliance practice. Alex’s creative outlet as a comedian is what keeps his work interesting and his audience engaged. Compliance can be much more compelling than you might imagine.
In this episode, Alex talks with Rebekah and Mac about his creative approach to engaging audiences about compliance, the benefits and pitfalls of conversations with compliance regulators, and the biggest challenges currently facing RIAs.
Key Takeaways
- [01:12] – An introduction to Alex Egan.
- [03:17] – Should compliance be a selling point?
- [05:00] – What happens when firms outgrow manual processes?
- [07:25] – How Alex brings creative outlets into his work.
- [13:24] – Alex’s most helpful community of industry professionals.
- [16:09] – The pros and cons of conversations with compliance regulators.
- [22:36] – The biggest compliance challenge facing RIAs — the SEC’s Modernized Marketing Rule.
- [25:53] – Why it can be difficult to comply with performance advertising obligations.
Quotes
[06:17] – “The process of having controls in place, of having technology solutions that the customer may be interacting with at various points in the relationship, these sorts of things may give a comfort level to a customer. That lets them know that there is a controlled process in place versus just talking to someone and writing a check and saying, “great, okay, where did my money go?’” ~ Alex Egan
[09:57] – “I always ask myself, ‘how do you get people interested in something that they’re not interested in?’ And the key was simply engagement. and that’s why I was able to use comedy as a way to keep people engaged in the conversation. If you are performing comedy, but at the same time delivering very important information, the retention goes up significantly and people walk away enjoying the laugh, but they also remember what you were talking about. ~ Alex Egan
[18:27] – “Even if you’re not willing to open up in that big room or ask the question broadly [to regulators], certainly when you develop those relationships and conversations, you’re a little bit more comfortable having those conversations later on.” ~ Alex Egan
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