Compliance Officer

Translates the rules the bank operates under into things the business can actually do, and checks that it does them.

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED 2026-10-11

// 01 — WHAT A COMPLIANCE OFFICER DOES

Part interpretation, part advice, part assurance: reading a new obligation and working out what it means for a product, a process and a conversation with a customer, then testing whether the change happened. Conduct — whether customers are treated fairly, not merely lawfully — is the growing half of the seat.

// 02 — WHO ARRIVES HERE

Law and audit backgrounds, regulators moving across, and front-line bankers who move into it mid-career.

// 03 — WHAT THE INTERVIEW ASKS

These are the shapes the round takes, not a question bank — banks phrase them differently and the wording is never the point.

01A new obligation lands. Walk me through your first fortnight.
02The business wants to launch on Friday and you are not comfortable. What do you do?
03Something is legal and would not look good in a newspaper. Your advice?
04How do you make a rule land with people who did not ask for it?
05How would you test whether a policy is being followed?
06When is escalation the right answer, and when is it an abdication?

What the panel is listening for. Whether you can be independent without being obstructive, and whether your advice comes with a workable alternative attached.

Practise the round in the risk, compliance and audit quiz: one of its five questions is this seat's own, and every answer has the senior interviewer's read.

Take the quiz →

// 04 — ONE QUESTION, WORKED

QA new obligation lands. Walk me through your first fortnight.

A strong answer reads the rule itself rather than a summary of it, then maps where it touches the bank: which products, which processes, which customer conversations, and who owns each. It separates what must change by the effective date from what can follow, agrees owners and dates with the business rather than for it, and says how it will test, afterwards, that the change happened. The fortnight ends with a plan the business has signed, not a memo it has read.

A weak one writes a policy update and circulates it, which records that the rule exists and changes nothing a customer will notice.

The seat is credible only when it is independent without being obstructive, and its advice is worth reading only when an alternative comes attached. Much of a bank's conduct exposure sits in lending — what a borrower was told, what the bank knew — and the borrower-side pages show that conversation from the customer's chair, which is where a conduct question starts.

START HERE · How banks read you

THE IN-TRAY · ONE MINUTE