Regulatory Compliance Software

Regulatory compliance software is the system an organisation uses to hold the records a regulator can demand, retrieve them on request, and keep them for as long as the law requires. The test of one is not how many features it has. It is whether the right person can produce the right record, in a readable form, on the day someone asks for it.

Retention periods are set externally and they are long. Section 286 of the Corporations Act requires a company to keep written financial records that correctly record and explain its transactions, and to retain them for 7 years after the transactions they cover are completed. Failing to keep those records is a strict liability offence, and directors who do not take reasonable steps to secure compliance can be exposed under section 344. A shared drive and good intentions stop being enough once a company reaches any real size.

Access matters as much as retention. Since 1 January 2020, public companies, large proprietary companies and proprietary companies that are trustees of registrable superannuation entities have had to maintain a whistleblower policy under section 1317AI and make it available to their officers and employees. Availability is the obligation. A policy nobody can find does not meet it, which is why self-service access to policies and records is a regulatory feature rather than a convenience.

A workable system usually brings together:

• retention rules applied per record type, not one blanket period
• self-service records management so staff can retrieve their own completions
• privacy awareness, because personal information sits inside those records
• board level reporting through a governance, risk and compliance system

Posts tagged here look at what Australian organisations are actually asked to produce, and how they answer. Obligations vary by entity type and sector and change over time, so treat this as general information rather than legal advice. ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 270 sets out the whistleblower policy requirements in full. To see how records, policies and reporting sit in one place, visit the Sentrient compliance management system.