In episode 65 of the Get Hired Up podcast, we launched a three-part series on financial services regulatory compliance. This episode focuses on insider trading. Upcoming episodes will focus on compliance related to artificial intelligence and cyber security. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to speak with Amy Kadomatsu and Bill Carrigan of COMPLY. As a global market leader in regulatory compliance solutions, COMPLY combines the power of regulatory technology, services and education to empower chief compliance officers and compliance professionals to easily navigate regulatory landscapes. Amy has long served the financial services industry. Prior to joining COMPLY, Amy was the President of ROKO Labs, a Managing Director at S&P Global and the Chief Product Officer at TheMarkets.com which Capital IQ acquired. Bill Carrigan is a Director of Compliance for COMPLY. Prior to joining, he was the Deputy Commissioner of the Vermont Department of financial regulation securities division and was also the Investor Education Coordinator. Bill is also an adjunct professor at Champlain College in Vermont where he teaches white collar crime in the cyber forensics and digital investigations program. I hope you enjoy the show!

Amy and Bill, welcome to the get hired out podcast.

Amy Kadomatsu 

Thank you for having us!

Maureen Farmer

You're welcome. It's a pleasure. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about who COMPLY is what they do. From my point of view, just a brief intro, and then we're going to ask Amy and Bill some questions Who is COMPLY? So, COMPLY is for compliance people emerging technology consulting and education, their portfolio of firms empowers clients with the confidence to navigate the ever changing regulatory environment. Together, they serve more than 7000 clients, including registered investment advisors, private equity firms, and hedge funds, all of whom have access to their full suite of industry leading governance Risk and Compliance GRC consulting, technology, managed services, analytics and outsourcing solutions. Amy Kadomatsu is the Chief Executive Officer of COMPLY. And Bill Carrigan is a director of compliance for COMPLY.

Amy Kadomatsu 

Fantastic. And thank you again, so, so much her, inviting us to the podcast. Again, so many acronyms, so many words, compliance, regulatory service, all of these things. Bill, as I'm sure you will attest, just so many words to sort through, that's what we love about this whole thing. And so COMPLY is an organization we rebranded last year, we encompass a number of different companies that we've brought together under one umbrella. It includes RIA in a box, it includes complySCI, it includes illumise, and includes NRS, which was National Regulatory Services. And as we come together to bring all of these entities and organizations together, really, we had one vision, one mission at the end of the day, which was to serve the Chief Compliance Officer and to become the Chief Compliance Officers first call, being the champion for compliance professionals in this day and age is no small feat. But I'll tell you, it's changing every single day and insider trading…something that you know, if you think about we talked about eons ago, you and we continue to talk about every few years, as we see insider trading activity had been and people going to jail or people getting tried for insider trading. And, you know, when we think about how compliance is really ever present for financial services organizations, like the ones that you mentioned, it's one of the things that we really feel like, we need to elevate the Chief Compliance Officer and what they do. And so we help through all of our solutions, whether it technology, IT services, whether it's helping them through all of these different things with our employee compliance program management, our policies and procedures and our employee code, that code of ethics, our employee trade monitoring solutions, our regulatory filing services, monitoring political contribution activities, which is so important right now.

Maureen Farmer

That is really, really fascinating to me. So before we launch into it, you mentioned that you want to be the Chief Compliance Officers first call. So what might that look like Amy?

Amy Kadomatsu 

Well, you know, really, it's a place in the mindset of the Chief Compliance Officer. And oftentimes for Bill, and he talks about this when he introduces himself. It's, who do I call first, when I have this issue, when an issue arises, I'm not sure who to call. And so who can I call?

Maureen Farmer

What might be an example? I know there could be a million of them. But what would be the typical, I need to talk to COMPLY, I need to talk to someone, Bill or Amy or...

Amy Kadomatsu 

I would love Bill to talk about that. I mean, really, at the outset of an organization is a fantastic time when people call us, in addition to larger firms.

Bill Carrigan

So the short answer, honestly, Maureen, is it depends. And it depends on the individual Chief Compliance Officer, kind of where they're at. You see chief compliance officers with a variety of different backgrounds. Some of them have been around forever and know their way around the alphabet soup that Amy mentioned earlier. There's no shortage of acronyms in our in our industry, and then other CCOs are there because especially in a small firm today, drew the short straw, so they're going to be the CCO.

Maureen Farmer

Sure. So I'm just very curious, like, what would an example of that be?

Amy Kadomatsu 

So I think Maureen, to answer your question, I think really, if we think about small firms to large firms...at the inception of a small firm...so think about somebody who's just starting out their shot as an independent advisor, okay, they're starting up their company, they're starting up their their firm, they need to think about all of the regulatory components as well as thinking about clients. They call us up to help them register. They call us up and they ask Bill, what is it that I need to do to be compliant? What are the regulatory, you know, rules and regulations that I need to follow...it's likely that that person had come out of a larger organization. So let's say they'd come out of, you know, a large broker dealer, and they had been a registered rep there. And so they were acting as a wealth advisor, but they're now starting their own shop. Okay, so we help them do all of the infrastructure. In addition, we have large scale broker dealers who are on our systems, who then are saying, I had been thinking about replacing, how I monitor my employees and their training, I'd really like to expand and to be more sophisticated, and how I think about monitoring my employees over the 1000s and 1000s of employees that I have in my organization, can you help me do that? What are the ways in which you can do that. And so we have incredible technology to integrate all the way through to HR systems to provide customized reports on the back end, and to provide both upstream and downstream integrations across the board. And so in some cases we are a one stop shop for people and other other cases provide highly customized solutions for people that really solve for particular rules and regulations within their organizations. And, you know, I think part of the challenge is that you've got a busy system that we help people to navigate.

Maureen Farmer

So legacy systems and things like that. And then Bill, you're from what I'm hearing your role is to you keep abreast of all of the regulations based on your your extensive regulatory background, and you know the regulations and understand exactly what they they need in order to remain compliant?

Bill Carrigan

Correct. Yeah. So essentially, personally, my background as I've been in the securities industry since 1993, held a plethora of NASD slash federal registrations and was with the Vermont Department of financial regulation for 16 years prior to joining COMPLY. So the array of areas that a chief compliance officer needs to be aware of, not only is is large and extensive, but its ever growing. And part of that is based on technology every every time a new piece of technology comes out, it also makes the life of the Chief Compliance Officer just a little bit more difficult, because it's one more thing that they need to a they need to understand how they may be able to use the technology. And quite frankly, that's one of the things that COMPLY brings to the table, if you know is we have that aspect of it that we that we bring to make their jobs a little easier. And then the flip side of that on a CCO as we're discussing insider trading is okay, how can somebody who wants to do something that they shouldn't be doing? How could they access this technology to help them circumvent our supervisory structure? So it's a pro and con, you know, the technology is good and like anything else, it could be used for something that's not so good. And we kind of understand that.

Maureen Farmer

So tell us a little bit about insider trading, what it is, and and I know there's a couple of case studies in the show notes earlier maybe talk a little bit about what it is and maybe an example of something that is current in the news today.

Bill Carrigan

So essentially, what it revolves around is, you know, the term itself is insider trading means somebody that is attempting to effectuate transactions, either for themselves or others based on information that is not readily available to the general public. So a recent example, the SEC recently took an action against two individuals, one of whom was an individual who essentially got access to insider information by accessing his girlfriend's laptop, and she works for an investment banking firm. So he was able to look at that laptop and pull out information that's not available to the general public, took that information decided it would be a good idea to trade on it, and then reached out to another individual who he knew who was in the industry, a broker dealer agent, a registered rep, and execute transactions through that individual who also thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and trade for themselves with that information.

Maureen Farmer

And this is during extreme COVID?

Bill Carrigan

That is where it emanated from. Yeah. And obviously, they both they both made some significant amounts of money that way. But as is normally the case, you know, there's a lot of tools out there that the SEC has, where they can monitor certain things and activity in certain accounts. And they're able to, you know, to find that and essentially come back, that's a recent one. And obviously, for anybody that's in the industry, you know, if you're, if you are found to be in violation of SEC rules regarding insider trading, your career is essentially Oh, yeah, you know, and then there's obviously, there's going to be financial ramifications and everything else. But I think one of the interesting things, and this is me, maybe with my jersey cynicism, but Jordan Meadow was the registered representative for the firm, for the broker dealer firm. And the other individual was a gentleman who worked for an international payment processing company. But ironically, he was the chief compliance officer. So you would think that a Chief Compliance Officer, regardless of what it is, would know better than to go ahead and go down this path. But I often have said that, and you've all heard this, you know, common sense is not common. And it certainly doesn't run rampant in the securities industry. So you know, when when you think about this, the other gentleman's name was Steven to share. And he's the one it was his girlfriend's laptop. So he is the one that kind of initiated this and then gots meadow, who was a registered rep, and also should have known better, allegedly. Yeah, there's a lot of allegedly these whenever you talk about these, but yeah, it's it's just kind of funny, because you have to, you know, you have to wonder, and, yeah, as a fraud examiner, you have somebody that is a Chief Compliance Officer, who is deciding to go on and thinks it's a good idea to let me look at my girlfriend's laptop and see what information I can get. And then I'm going to trade off of that. So that's a little scary...

Maureen Farmer

Very scary. There's no question about that.

Bill Carrigan

And so when, you know, when we kind of talk about insider trading as a whole, and how the landscape is, is, you know, kind of tough for a Chief Compliance Officer. Realistically, if you're a Chief Compliance Officer at a firm, you know, something like that, how do you how do you even find out about it? You know, how do you solve it? You know, it kind of goes back to you as a CEO, as Chief Compliance Officer, you kind of have to think outside the box. And I mentioned this yesterday to Amy and Brianna. And I was almost asked to try to get this in here, but I said sometimes being a Chief Compliance Officer is like being a blindfolded ballerina trying to do a dance on a firing range.

Maureen Farmer

Oh gosh. Yeah, I think a unique skill set.

Bill Carrigan

Yeah, it is. And you know, some people are better than others. But you know, the interesting thing here is, that's where the tools that we bring to the table, COMPLY bring to the table is that combination of the of the outstanding technology with people that know what they're doing, and care about what we do to make sure that our clients get the best of all worlds that we have to offer, and try to give it to them in a way that is understandable, digestible, and kind of make sense. And they really feel like they have another member of their team, when they call us.

Amy Kadomatsu 

And so when we think about kind of, what do the tools help them with? Or what do our services help them with? Often when I talk to compliance officers or any compliance person, Bill you tell me if you hear something differently..when I hear them talk about the split of how much they're focused on administrative versus strategic. The split is in the wrong direction, ie more administrative, not in a strategic. And on the strategic side, part of that strategic is how is it that I create this culture of compliance? When you think about inside of an organization there's only so much technology can do the rest of it also is to ensure that from that pure perspective, from a culture perspective, that there is this understand and how much training there is this other piece of this, which is human and it's engagement, and in this hybrid environment, it's so much more challenging, because you can't just stop by somebody's desk to talk to them about an issue.

Maureen Farmer

So, both hybrid and hyper connected as well, all those different data points. So Bill, in that particular scenario with the laptop scenario, how, what was the trigger event? Or maybe you can't tell me? I don't know. But what was the trigger event that informed the SEC, that there was something awry?

Bill Carrigan

So the SEC is very good when they announce some of these actions, they're very good at not telling you actually how they found it. They don't want to give that away. But, you know, they also they monitor activity, trading activities, everything is done electronically. So they look for, you know, anomalies, or large fluctuations, especially like a thinly traded security, for example...

Maureen Farmer

What Bill is referring to here in terms of thinly traded securities are those securities that trade at a low volume, regular traded securities typically trade at volume of 500,000 units per day.

Bill Carrigan

There could be activity that's beyond the norm. And why did this happen? You know, so they can go back in and they can track it and essentially work backwards. It's almost like a following the money kind of scenario. I'm also a certified Fraud Examiner and a certified Economic Crime Forensics Examiner. So I've kind of done some of that work previously, while at the Vermont Department of financial regulation. But I can't give you all my my tips and tricks and trade secrets. You know, it's ironically, I also am an adjunct professor at a college here in Vermont, and I teach white collar crime. And some of some of my family and friends from New Jersey ask me if I teach them about white collar crime, or if I teach them how to commit white collar crime.

Maureen Farmer

Well, Bill, maybe you'll have to come back on the podcast again. And we can do a whole other conversation around white collar crime and, and the fraud the fraud piece, I find that really quite fascinating. Okay, so understood, you can't disclose some of this stuff. Why don't we talk a little bit about the trends that you're we're seeing right now, and how, you know, organizations, such as COMPLY can help assist organizations to remain compliant and keep people safe?

Amy Kadomatsu 

Well, I think, you know, I'll take some of it. And you can take some of it, too, in terms of some of the recommendations...you know, we had just done an internal webinar to our clients, to be honest, Maureen on this exact topic, because what happens when things like this happen, so there's this action, this governmental action against these people, and then you've got our clients who then say, well, let's refresh, let's make sure that we've got all of our systems clamped down. So there's a kind of literally a domino effect that happens within organizations where then you say, Let's tune policies and procedures, let's ensure that we are monitoring our employees properly, let's ensure we have all of our broker feet up and running. So the way that technology could help actually in because we have automated broker feeds that allow you to monitor data in a way that you could never do if it was just on paper and you were looking at a couple of different pieces...

Maureen Farmer

What's a broker feed?

Amy Kadomatsu 

You know, when you have employees, in a financial services organization, oftentimes, you have to disclose your accounts, your personal accounts, to the organization and the organization then monitors those accounts. In the olden days, when there wasn't the broker feed that were set up, you would provide them your paper statements, and you would send them in and there are these piles of documents, and they're still piles of documents, people still have them. But we created a better way, lo and behold, and that was with regards to electronic capabilities to basically take in that data, and then to automatically be able to compare and draw, right and to pull in that data. So you can do a couple of things. One is, if there are watchlist, or restricted list, things that you can't trade on, you can automatically say like, Hey, if there is a preclearance activity that happens, maybe don't trade on those kinds of stocks as an example, there are rules that you can implement on what you can trade on what you can't train on. There are things that you can do so that then you can monitor activity. Are there people who are day trading, as an example, slides within the system that you can then start to as a compliance officer have controls within your organ isation to understand what your employees are doing, that would have been so hard to do if you had to just look at brokerage statements one by one. And that's really the power of what technology can bring to the table. And so making sure that all of those are fine-tuned, is precisely what our clients are asking for from a technology perspective. And it's both pre, during and post trade activities. In addition to that, now that we're COMPLY, then it's okay, how do I make sure that I've got expert advice on what regulators are asking for? What is the new knowledge? What is Bill, you know, What's the word on the street? What is it that the litigators are saying, and I know that you've got an upcoming webinar...

Bill Carrigan

So I think, Maureen, it's a good combination, right? It's a combination of the technology that we bring to the table, coupled with the real life, you know, boots on the ground experience of we have folks here like, like myself, there's, there's, you know, we have a hole as Amy likes to refer to us, as you know, we have a bench here, we got a lot of performers. And we have people that can kind of come in and out here with a lot of extensive experience. So as a, as a Chief Compliance Officer, you realize, you can't do everything. And as Amy mentioned, it's not like the old days where we get hardcopy statements and confirmations from the firms and we could we could match those up. Things happen in real time now, so that the technological aspect that we bring to the table is just a huge component to helping these firms, you know, stay on the right side of where they need to be. And, you know, some of the things that we talked to firms about is, you know, when you develop your policies and procedures, which are quote, unquote, reasonably designed to allow compliance with the SEC, or state rules, regulations, statutes are things that that you can do to be proactive, you can have Amy mentioned a restricted list. So maybe you have a list of of equities that you don't allow your folks to trade it for whatever reason, it could be because of other folks that are part of the firm or have relatives that are part of the firm. So you might not allow trading in certain stocks, where they may be an influencer for lack of a better word. Another one would be that they have to provide trades for review prior to executing the trade. So the chief compliance officer can kind of stay on top of what his folks may be doing. You know, a lot of times they're doing that anyway, because there's, there's a term that you get graded on terms, but this one will be kind of easy to understand it, there's a term called front running, right in front running is if I'm an advisor, and I'm making recommendations or suggestions to clients to purchase certain securities. I can't get all my clients to say yeah, okay, I want to do that. And then me as Bill Carrigan individual or me as Bill Carrigan IAR, of the RIA can't place...IAR is investment advisor representative and RIA is registered investment advisor, very confusing, we take the same letters and just change the order...means two different things. But I can't go ahead and place trades for me or my firm ahead of those of the clients, that's called front running. Right? It's illegal so can't do it. So we talk to chief compliance officers about these things and steps they can take to ensure that their firm is not going to have to, you know, be subjected to a knock on the door, by the SEC, or by somebody else. And when you take those, and then combine those with the technological aspects that we bring to the table, it allows the Chief Compliance Officer to go home and essentially sleep a little better at night.

Maureen Farmer

Well, that's great. Thank you for that. So I'd love to know a little bit about COMPLY in terms of the three pillars. I know that the three pillars are technology, service and education. I would love to know a little bit more about that if you want it to share a little bit.

Amy Kadomatsu 

Sure. 100%. So you know, when when you bring together these three different pillars, and what we find is that technology and the platforms alone, are hugely, incredibly powerful technology on its own can be incredibly powerful. And what we've talked about in terms of transforming those piles of paper into something which is actionable and and can really process all of this information that you couldn't otherwise do in a meaningful way, kind of lickety split grid in real time, that has really transformed the way that compliance officers can scale. What they do Well, within an organization has really allowed compliance officers to continue to monitor their employees worldwide at scale. What we have found, however, though, is that when you think about all of the pieces that a compliance officer, it is not a set it and forget it, because regulation is ever changing the consulting piece, understanding that expertise, having that deep bench strength of expertise, everything continues to change. When we think about different roles that might come into play. They get update, they get changed, a marketing role just was implemented last year, and there are still ongoing questions, there are modifications or clarifications to a particular rule. Bill, I can't recall, I think that the marketing rule is over 300 pages.

Bill Carrigan

Actually, the the actual release for the SEC marketing rule with the SEC marketing rule itself would take up normally two to three pages of an SEC manual if it was hard copy. But the release to explain this was 470 pages. Why it takes 470 pages to explain to I'm not quite sure. But that's one of the things that we brought to the table was to help the firm's understand, okay, here, here's what it is. We're gonna and I live in Vermont, so we use the term sugar it down, right, because we're big maple producers, so that it's sugar it down for them so that we can get the syrup rather than all sap, you know, so...

Maureen Farmer

You're talking to a Canadian Podcast Producer. And we understand the sugar too haha.

Bill Carrigan

Yes. But that's one of the things where the technology aspect is one piece, but they haven't been having individuals that can help you to digest what they're actually saying in the 470 pages, right? Because there's the rule. And then there's the spirit of the rule. And we help them get to what the spirit of the rule is, how it may impact them, and steps that they could take to make sure that they're doing things the way they should be doing.

Amy Kadomatsu 

Because oftentimes, when we talk about these things, it's not a black and white situation in our there are interpretations. And so having experts who can then help you to interpret and to then define for yourself, what it is that you should be doing is imperative, and to make sure that you're implementing it in the way that your other sports are then brought in and and kind of ensuring that you're executing this appropriately is is important. The last piece is then education. And really, when we talk about education, it's education for compliance professionals. So Bill, being a educator himself, I think he can talk about this in so much more depth than I can. But I think, you know, we have a long desire to create this echo system, you know, there, the idea of a Chief Compliance Officer, generally speaking, is a relatively new concept. And the idea of compliance as a career is a very new concept. And what you see is that just like there is a dearth of technologists and engineers and developers, talk to anybody in compliance, it is the same thing. There are no compliance people that are out there that you can hire. It's so hard. And so this idea of continuing to both grow compliance people, as well as non to help people to keep up to date, on their education. It's super important. And, you know, I think they'll, you know, you see that from the frontlines in terms of just the demand, for sure.

Bill Carrigan

No, you're absolutely right. And it is a difficult, you know, a difficult thing to find qualified people. I mean, even stepping back to my previous role with whenever I was a deputy commissioner, I would cringe anytime somebody would say that they were leaving to go somewhere else, and I would have to replace them. Because there are just not a lot of folks with this kind of background. You know, originally I mentioned, I'm from New Jersey, well, in New Jersey, in New York, I might be able to swing a rope outside of my office window and rope, somebody that knew something about securities and compliance. Right. Now, it's to the point where, you know, one of the basic questions is when you talk to somebody is alright, can you tell me the difference between a municipal bond and James Bond? They can then you know, then you have something that you can work with, but we do a lot of education. And in fact, NASA, not not the rocket science, NASA, but the North American Securities Administrators Association. I was very heavily involved with NASA over my years with the state of Vermont, and we saw the issue with investment advisors individually, because if they weren't affiliated with a broker dealer, right, if they didn't work for a broker dealer firm, or if they didn't have one of five of the professional designations, they'd had no continuing education. and requirements that they would have to meet. So you can have someone who was providing investment advice to clients for 20 years, and would never have been subject to any sort of continuing education. So it really how was that in the best interest of investors, right. So NASA implemented investment advisor, Representative continuing education, and I was part of that initial group that developed that with NASA, which started actually back in 2014. But we developed that as additional continuing education for folks delivering the investment advice. And the same kind of thing is true for compliance, folks, I mean, it now is becoming a little bit more, you know, not where it should be. But it is a career path. For a lot of folks. I mean, I kind of got into it, I was uh, you know, I had a bunch of registrations, I started in the industry as a broker dealer agent, I was a muni bond salesman at a firm in New Jersey, where, you know, they gave you the list, you made 200, cold calls a day before you can leave the office, thank God, you can't do that anymore. But you know, that's what we did. And I realized very early on, I wasn't a sales guy. I know that I didn't enjoy that I liked working with clients, I had a family history and law enforcement, I wanted to be in law enforcement myself, but my wife made me make the choice early on, she didn't want to get that call two o'clock in the morning. So we were married for about six months. And she said, Well, you can either become a cop, or you could stay married to me. So we're still married, we just graded a pretty large anniversary a few weeks ago, but compliance was something that it would be about the closest thing except I didn't get a gun in the badge. But I could, I could have some impact on people. And at the end of the day, to feel like I was doing something good. And I think now we see that people understand that. And it's a viable career path for folks. And to have an opportunity like this at COMPLY for former regulators.

Maureen Farmer

 I'm just drinking it all in here. So I'm just curious, what would be the typical career path for a Chief Compliance Officer, it's probably a variation of things, but just to give the listener a sense of what that path might look like, for somebody who's interested in in the industry.

Bill Carrigan

So you know, fortunately, there's, there's a few different ways that you can you can get here, I've seen CCO chief compliance officers, I'll try not to use acronyms, chief compliance officers that have a legal background, you know, coupled with some time in the securities industry, maybe they worked for, you know, a firm, maybe a mergers and acquisitions firm. So they've got some background, and then they kind of learn the rest of it, nobody is going to be able to just kind of come come into the role, knowing everything, there's going to be some, you know, on the job type training, you can have people like myself, who had, I had three different principal registrations municipal options, I was an options for it's full of municipal principal and a general securities principal. So that gave me kind of like, the overarching background, if you will, and then you kind of combine that with the fact that I did not like selling, and it kind of focused me on onto onto the compliance side. So that's, that's a way we have some folks that go into jurisdictions or states and become securities regulators come from law enforcement, because they have that aspect. So it's a lot of a two is the mindset, you know, and it takes kind of a special person because, you know, compliance that used to be in the old days that you were the compliance folks were viewed as the quote unquote, deal killers, because you just shut things down. Well, when somebody comes to the table, with background from the industry, especially when I, as a regulator, I would meet with, you know, state registered advisory firms. And when we would talk about things I would say, you know, what, you, you can't do it this way. And here's why. But here's a way you can do it, and still write the business, you know, that you need to keep your business operating and viable, and still provide that level of service that you need, so that the client gets what they need as well. And it's kind of a win win win for everybody. And firms appreciate that. It's almost like an aha moment, you know, like, okay, so you're not just going to tell me what I can't do, you're going to, you're going to tell me that I can't do it. So you're going to keep me out of trouble. But now you're also going to help me understand ways that I can do this business and still be able to provide a valuable, valuable service for their clients. And that to me, that's like a great day. I love that when I can help somebody from you know, fallen through the thin ice and and let them do what they need to do that. That's that's a pretty good day.

Amy Kadomatsu 

To add on to that a little bit, I mean, you know, what I see a lot is that when you look at the historical kind of it was very meandering because there was no true path to be honest, two bowls, one I think what we're trying to help do and what you start to see cropping up within law schools and other organizations, there are definitely compliance programs that are starting to crop up, it might be an executive education program, it might be kind of like an adjunct program, or it might be like a side program, or it might be a couple of classes. But there are these compliance components that are starting to crop up across the globe. And you start to see that and so I think that that then is sparking this, oh, there is this focus that we should start to add. And so you're seeing much more professionalism, because you see that ability, you can go a GC route, you can go a compliance route within an organization or institutional side, certainly, within smaller organizations, you kind of have to wear a lot of hats. And then there is also for other people who are plucked out of nowhere and who become compliance administrators. They're really trying to create professional certification. So they might not have an ability to go to a law school, but they are trying to professionalize themselves. And we're trying to create an ecosystem for them to to educate themselves and to have certifications, and to learn more about compliance programs overall. And that's really the at the heart of what Bill has started, you know, and again, you said 2014, that was the start!

Maureen Farmer

That wasn't that long ago.

Amy Kadomatsu 

It wasn't that long ago!

Maureen Farmer

No. So just so that I'm clear, in my mind, COMPLY offers education certifications. So tell them a little bit about that.

Amy Kadomatsu 

It's under the umbrella of what's called the IACCP and we offer, you know, a number of webinars. And then there are other seminars and things like that, that we do both in person and online, where we offer CLE credits, and lots of these other kinds of like legally sounding credits that you then can end up to combine associated with this, in order to satisfy and to put forth.

One of my corporate careers was continuing legal education for lawyers and judges. And so I traveled around to mostly in the United States, in some parts of Canada, taking a lot of these programs to create programs to be compliant with the law societies and Bar Association. So I'm very familiar with that model. And that activity.

Amy Kadomatsu 

So we have an entire part of our organization that's focused on education.

I did not know that I knew there was an education component. I wasn't sure there are I didn't realize that's awesome.

Amy Kadomatsu 

And it culminates every year in an event that we call COMPLY connect. We have already got hundreds of people lined up, we just had that last November. We will have it again this November, we've got hundreds of people already signed up, we didn't even really market it. So we're really super happy about the attendees already. And it's going to be out in California this year. And we do awards as well. So compliance awards, and we're really happy to recognize global leaders in compliance.

Maureen Farmer

Awesome. That's terrific. And I think we talked about this before, and I'm excited to also share with the listeners here, we're going to have two more podcasts on some highly relevant topics relating to financial services and fintech around I think we talked about artificial intelligence and the risks associated with that. And then the final one that we talked about doing is around cybersecurity. Another really fascinating topic that ties into compliance and the world of hyper connectivity. We’re looking forward to the next two episodes with Amy Kadomatsu, Helen and Stephen Pitt-Walker.

Amy Kadomatsu 

All such important topics. And, you know, I think things that chief compliance officers are grappling with every day.

Bill Carrigan

I think Amy brings up a good point, a lot of the culture within an entity, as it relates to compliance starts at the top. Yeah, if the folks at the top don't think it's important, it's not going to filter down, it's not going to gain importance as it goes lower. And, you know, in the organization, that compliance culture needs to be put out there that it needs to be kind of reinforced through through training and, and all different different types of things like that. And I think, you know, speaking from a personal standpoint, if a firm doesn't take compliance Seriously, that's not the kind of place that I would want to be because I could potentially be, you know, in jeopardy in a spot like that. The culture needs to be put out there. And everybody needs to understand it and know it. And it just makes things so much easier for that Chief Compliance Officer to operate in that sort of environment.

Maureen Farmer

And all the stakeholders associated with the organization too because that's value preservation.

Bill Carrigan

Sure, I mean, the last…I know everybody says there's no such thing as bad publicity. But you don't want to see your firm's name on a SEC press release.

Maureen Farmer

No! And there are quite a few on there right now. So look, I can't thank you enough for for joining me here on the podcast.

Before we sign off, I have a couple I have a fun question for you. So Westgate, they get heard a podcast and Westgate is putting together a list of restaurants and we release it every year, around Christmas time, the New Year, would love to get a restaurant from you, Amy and one from you, Bill, because I think you're in different areas. So tell us about one restaurant you can think of that we could add to that list that you just absolutely love. Amy is tapping her cheek thinking about it.

Bill Carrigan

That's the good thing about living in Vermont. There's not that many that would make you sit there and tap your cheek. I can tell you in Burlington, Vermont, probably the best restaurant is a restaurant by the name of E B Strong's. And there was another another small spot called Halvorson and the gentleman who owned Halvorson wanted to bring something a little more upscale to Burlington, and he wanted to do something similar to like a New York dry aged steakhouse. So he started EB Strong's. And that's kind of like a family favorite. Whenever it's my wife or daughter's birthday, or anniversary or whatever, provided they're open that day, we go to E B Strong's, and it's one of the only places in Vermont where you can go and get a tomahawk steak.

Oh, well, I've never had one of those. So I'll have to put that on my list.

Bill Carrigan

I haven't either. I've watched the people next to me have it. It looks really good. But that's a good spot. And it's in Burlington, Vermont.

Maureen Farmer

I've been to Burlington, Vermont before, so I have to make my way back there and get to that restaurant. So how about you, Amy?

Amy Kadomatsu 

I'll give you two. So I'll continue on this steak, which is in New York City. There's a place and this is not my recognition,  definitely my husband's which is an all you can eat A5 wagyu restaurant. And it's called Hyun so it's in a Korean style, but they bring it in front of you, they cook it in front of you. At some point, I get tired. He continues on and on. And it's delicious. So that's number one. And I was recently in Tokyo. And I would say anywhere in the Tsukiji outer market, just sit down. It is the fastest, most delicious, really inexpensive sushi you'll ever eat. And it was so awesome.

Maureen Farmer

Well, that's the very first restaurant we've had on the list from Japan. So thank you for that. Maddie and I laugh and we say that that list is our wishlist, we're going to try to get to every restaurant on that list. So that one's going to be a little bit of a challenge, but I'll have to make it happen.

Amy Kadomatsu 

Absolutely. We're already dreaming of going back.

Maureen Farmer

Awesome. Were you there for business or for pleasure?

Amy Kadomatsu 

So we are on our way to go to a wedding in the Philippines and you can't get to that location without stopping somewhere. So we have like 24 hours in Tokyo and what do you do when your 24 hours in Tokyo? You run to the Tsukiji market and you try a million things and you eat at the sushi counter. You don't know what you're ordering, you don't know if it's good or which one is the best one but you just sit down and you order some things and it's amazing.

Maureen Farmer

That's awesome. That's fantastic. Well, look, I can't thank you enough for joining us here for the Get Hired Podcast and we'll make sure that we get all of those restaurants on the show notes. All right, well, Bill, Amy, thank you. Thank you for your help Brianna, she's on the call, she's sort of quietly in the background helping out here. It's been such a pleasure. And that's all she wrote. Thank you!