Innovation Insider towards SG’s North Star. Let's talk with Valerie Dessaignes about the future of Compliance

SG is present in 62 countries, driving innovation for our customers by unleashing the collective intelligence of our 138,000 colleagues is an adventure every day! Time to meet our innovators leading the transformation of our businesses and creating new business models.

After spending 8 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Valérie joined Societe Generale in 2006 where she managed several regulatory programs and was Group Chief Data Officer before joining Compliance in 2006 to head the Digital Transformation Office. Her career focus has always been on how to make better use of innovative solutions to unlock the power of data. Valérie is a big fan of an escape game and maybe that's why she choose Compliance Transformation... you need to follow the data and have a little bit of AI to succeed your next gen operations :)

Valérie, could you please tell us about the changes of Compliance under your leadership?

Since the launch of our Compliance Service Unit in January 2018, our Chief Compliance Officer, Edouard-Malo Henry was eager to use innovative tools to address compliance efficiency issues and ensure full adherence to regulatory obligations. We started with RPAs to automate specific steps of manual processes, moved on to SmartAutomation to automate end to end processes using OCR, NLP, and process automation tools, developed a digital portal for Compliance (MySGCompliance) with a chatbot to provide answers to over 1300 questions. Since June 2019 we have moved on to Artificial Intelligence with the NextGen initiative.

After 10 years of compliance in banks, we can really see the opportunities of cloud and data, what are your strategic projects to bring a 1900 function into the 21st century?

We have three critical initiatives on data and cloud, first CARMA (Compliance Activity Reporting Monitoring and Analytics) which involves building the Compliance data lake and the oversight functionality (BI) within this data lake, secondly the Data Visa initiative launched with the data offices, which aims to define Data Transfer Agreements between the Group Central functions and each subsidiary and thirdly the NextGen program which will provide a mutualized platform for alert detection for Compliance risks with a 360° view of the client, a risk based approach to replace the existing rule based scenarios, a machine learning model that will evolve as it receives feedback from the analysts, a trigger based review of customer behaviour, and a full end to end set of modular functionalities from data preparation (data acquisition, ontology, quality analysis, lineage), customer behaviour analysis (risk based model), workflow (from system to LoD1 and LoD2 investigators) and reporting (internal and regulatory). 

Our Group Innovation and Digital strategy is focused around scaling-up AI, Open Banking and Open Innovation, what are your main achievements to date?

A number of projects have been implemented using OCR, NLP, and some limited AI which include Jordan (KYC on-boarding for our private bank), Digitrade (trade finance for GTPS), Yup (customer on-boarding for Africa) and Insta KYC (KYC review tool for retail). On the Data visualization aspect, our compliance reporting tool now holds 5To of data enabling us to automate oversight and reporting generation. In parallel we have several POCs in progress using AI both for the KTP program (client filtering) and for AML (alert scoring and calibration, AML behaviour spotting, customer profiling). 

These projects include API development to foster internal sharing of services, consistent with our Open Banking Strategy.

In terms of Open Innovation, we have several partnerships with Regtechs or innovation labs and a footprint in universities such as the University of Madras in India.

What’s your commitment to build a more sustainable future for Compliance?

Implementing CARMA, Data Visa, and NextGen will make a huge difference in the way we detect and manage compliance risks. Instead of continuing to improve static systems that are siloed by risk, we are changing the paradigm by analysing deviancies in customer behaviour which will allow us to address financial crime much more efficiently both in terms of cost and in terms of being more reactive to criminal behaviours. Using a single platform instead of multiple systems will significantly reduce our footprint. 

Where do you see Compliance in 5 years?

In 5 years, I see a Compliance that has a comprehensive and modular oversight on compliance risks throughout the Group, an ability to rapidly detect fraudulent activities, networks and clusters, and that collaborates with other banks and regulators through AI technologies to proactively ensure crime prevention. 

3 key words to describe yourself?

Curious, driven, determined

Thank you Valerie! If you enjoyed it, please like it or Share it! 

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