Compliance/Ops

In the context of the financial industry, compliance and operations roles are often seen as distinct, each with its own set of responsibilities and skill sets. However, there is some overlap in the skills and attributes required for success in both areas. Here's a breakdown based on the WSO Dataset:

1. Compliance Roles: These typically focus on ensuring that the firm and its employees adhere to both internal policies and external regulations. Compliance professionals work to identify, assess, and manage the risk of non-compliance, which can include legal or regulatory penalties, financial losses, or damage to reputation. They are involved in developing compliance policies, monitoring transactions, and conducting investigations into breaches of regulations.

2. Operations Roles: Operations in a financial context generally refers to the back-end processes that support trading, investment management, and other financial services. This can include tasks such as trade settlement, record keeping, data management, and reconciliation. Operations professionals work to ensure that these processes run smoothly, efficiently, and accurately, often using technology and systems to manage complex data and transactions.

While compliance is sometimes housed under the broader umbrella of operations in organizational structures, due to its focus on process and risk management, it is typically considered a separate function due to its specialized focus on regulatory requirements and risk mitigation. Saying that compliance is an operations role might not be entirely accurate, but it's understandable why one might see them as related given their shared emphasis on ensuring the smooth, lawful operation of financial activities.

If you referred to compliance as an operations role during an interview, it might not necessarily "boot" the interview, especially if you can articulate the similarities in skills and objectives between the two. It's important to recognize and communicate the unique value and focus of compliance as distinct from but complementary to operations.

Sources: Elite Operations Group?, PwC - Financial Services Advisory - Capital Markets Basically Just Risk & Compliance?, Operations - Good & Bad, Must I Bank?, Market Risk at Commercial Bank VS Ops Risk at MM