Nordic Ethics and Compliance Survey Report 2024

This is the 4th edition of the Nordic Ethics and Compliance Survey, and we would especially like to thank those who have taken the time to participate. Forty companies in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland participated, with some of the largest Nordic companies represented. The report highlights compliance trends in the region and compares them to the results from previous surveys and global findings from the KPMG Global CCO Survey.

Most of the responding Nordic companies (87.5 %) have an ethics and compliance function, however, growing regulatory expectations and scrutiny are creating new and complex challenges for Compliance to navigate. Survey results suggest many Nordic companies will need to step up to a new level, for example, by automating their compliance processes (for both preventative and detective activities), leveraging a risk-based third-party risk management approach, and implementing key performance indicators and the regular monitoring of their compliance program.

"We hope that this report is useful to your organization's compliance efforts. We are glad to meet with you to discuss the results and provide benchmarking and reccomendations."

Beate Hvam-Laheld 

The vast majority of respondents (87.5 %) say their companies will likely face increasing regulatory expectations and scrutiny in the next two years, with the greatest pressure coming from regulators and social policy/public perception.

An arguably low percentage of respondents (37.5 %) say they have begun compliance process automation at some level. This is compared to 70 % of the respondents from the KPMG Global CCO Survey.

Many respondents (60%) named TPRM as one of their top areas eyed for process improvement in the coming years. The survey suggests third-party audits are being utilized by Nordic companies, but in limited scale.

Only around half of respondents say their company regularly monitors the effectiveness of their compliance program and at least 20.5% of the respondents do not utilize key performance indicators related to ethics and compliance.

A large majority of companies have a whistleblowing channel (93 %), however 22.5 % of respondents do not think the number of whistleblowing reports received reflects the potential level of incidents that have occurred.

Click through to see how respondents answered the question. The chart shows percentage of respondents (from highest to lowest) who selected each process areas in their top five choices.