Compliance has been one of the key areas in the work of business in recent years. And its role will only increase in the near future, believes Yusif Jabbarov, CEO of NEQSOL Holding. He encourages the owners and top managers of companies to keep up to speed. Moreover, he recently shared his vision of five key compliance trends, since ‘a proper understanding of the situation will maximize the benefits.’
Jabbarov names Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) criteria as one of the five key compliance trends. “The value of this became more than evident after the start of the pandemic, when a number of companies prioritized the health and safety of people – their employees, partners, contractors, etc,” says the CEO of NEQSOL Holding, an international group of companies which works in 9 countries in energy, telecom, hi-tech and construction materials markets.
“One of the trends is to introduce Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) criteria as an integral component of the compliance system. Criteria that relate to the environment include reducing CO2 emissions, reducing water consumption at production facilities, switching to renewable energy sources, etc. The social component defines the principles of interaction within the team and with suppliers, customers, and various communities. The value of this became more than evident after the start of the pandemic, when a number of companies prioritized the health and safety of people – their employees, partners, contractors, etc. And the third component of ESG relates to leadership and competent management, including in an unstable environment: this is the environment in which businesses around the world have been operating in recent years.”
Jabbarov notes that ESG is relatively new, so there is still ‘a lot of uncertainty.’ For example, he mentions that there is no clear definition of who will be responsible for developing it in a particular company. Some companies have delegated the work to the risk management department, some to compliance specialists, some to PR, and in some companies, the ESG specialist is a separate position.
“Now there is a directive that deals with developing ESG, but there are no detailed guidelines or clear instructions, like in, for example, sanctions compliance. I think the approach will be unified in the next year or two: each company will still determine for itself who will handle developing ESG, but the requirements for the specialists will be quite specific and uniform for all companies,” said Yusif Jabbarov, CEO of NEQSOL Holding.
