Compliance and the Millennium Debate

The debate about whether year 2000 is also the beginning of a new millennium is telling. People who want the year 2000 to be the new millennium are looking for a neat pattern that matches the dramatic change in numbers. People who are holding out for 2001 to be the beginning of the new millennium are historian purists who, having done their research and learned that when the calendar was established, the concept of zero did not exist, but ten and 100 did. Therefore the millennium doesn't end until we have completed the year 2000.

Except for when to have a fantastic party, does it really matter? It certainly doesn't to the dinosaurs. They had come and gone long before this man-made concept of time-keeping and calendars.

I, for one, would prefer to celebrate 2001 as the beginning of the new millennium for a reason that has little to do with calendars. It isn't a lot of fun to celebrate something as significant as the new millennium when half the population is at work watching for possible glitches created by the shortsighted and profit-motivated actions of people like Bill Gates and his cronies. I'd rather celebrate when there is a better chance of being with the people important to me.

After all, the "New Millennium" is just as man-made as the Y2K bug. Just ask any dinosaur. Actually, just ask any compliance manager about it. If compliance isn't "man made" then I'm hard pressed to figure out what is!

We created calendars because as humans, we sought a way of bringing certainty and significance into our lives. One way to do that was to place ourselves in time. Thus, the invention of the calendar.

We created compliance to create certainty and fairness for customers. To a customer, the certainty of being welcomed as a customer, of being treated fairly and as expected, and getting from the bank the product desired is as important as being able to slip into the lobby and check the date on the lobby calendar before writing a check or filling out a deposit slip.

Compliance, like the calendar, structures our world. It is there because we, as a society, put it there. It is our job, as compliance professionals, to make it work. Looked at in this way, isn't compliance and the certainty that it brings our customers just as important as knowing whether it is a work day or a weekend day?

But we also shouldn't take compliance or ourselves too seriously. The most important thing a bank can do is provide banking services to its customers. Compliance should support that primary goal, not impede it. If we take ourselves too seriously, we end up in the millennium debate. And remember, the guy who invented our calendar didn't know about zero and there is also serious question about whether he correctly calculated the date for the birth of Christ. Since the whole calendar - with or without zero - depends on that date, I take this as a sign that we shouldn't get too serious about this.

What we should be serious about is doing our job right. And that means working with the rest of the bank to develop policies, procedures, controls and training that get the job done: give service to customers. If we do that right, everything else falls into place - even the calendar!

Copyright © 2000 Compliance Action. Originally appeared in Compliance Action, Vol. 4, No. 17 & 18, 1/00