Compliance and FACT Act named top two challenges for 2008

Everywhere you look today, financial services news outlets are reporting about how compliance is the number one issue facing the industry this year. Last week, BankInfoSecurity.com followed suit and said the top two challenges in 2008 were “keeping up with compliance” and “FACT Act Red Flag Guidelines.” This should come as no surprise. Over the past few years, we have been accustomed to new compliance issues taking top billing on priority lists, such as the USA Patriot Act or Sarbanes-Oxley.

While everyone has their own take on compliance and the value, ID Insight is predicting that the new FACT Act Identity Theft Provisions will have the biggest positive effect on financial services compared to compliance issues of years past. The reason is that today, the major reason for the sustained increase in ID theft can be tracked back to the lack of controls around address changes and address discrepancies. The major theme of the FACT Act is to make sure that these controls are put in place. In doing so, we believe that the overall impact to the industry will be positive rather than a hindrance.