We provide sound legal advice targeted at risk management, business planning, and other proactive measures designed to avoid non-compliance

Risk management protects business assets and profits by reducing the potential for fees, penalties, litigation, and loss before it occurs, and by financing, through insurance and other means, potential risks to catastrophic loss.

Best practice for managed compliance is creating and implementing a risk-management strategy that includes policies, procedures, and compliance management tools to maintain the level of compliance that your firm requires.

Because of the ever-changing regulatory landscape, it is best-practice to consult with a qualified telecommunications compliance lawyer to protect your interests.

The first step is understanding your compliance risk

Compliance risk involves comparing the potential cost of fines and fees levied for non-compliance and comparing those to the cost of being in compliance with an applicable regulatory or tax requirement.

For example, if the cost to comply strictly in accordance with the law in a jurisdiction where you operate is $1,000 per year, but your operations only generate revenue of $100 per year in that jurisdiction, your company would lose $900 per year by being in strict compliance. However, if the jurisdiction is aggressively pursing non-compliance issues and the fine or fee is $10,000 per violation, your firm has the risk of losing $9,900 if the regulatory body enforces compliance. 

Strict compliance in this case may seem like a poor financial decision in terms of your annual profit and loss, but non-compliance may be an even higher risk. As legal experts, it is our role to ensure you are in compliance or on a path to compliance when non-compliance issues are identified. We help determine the impact non-compliance may have on your future financial position and craft a plan to put you on a path to compliance that is affordable and sustainable. 

Risk analysis helps support strategic decision making

Your telecommunications lawyer will identify and present analysis on your risk exposure, giving you a comprehensive, prioritized picture of your compliance risk based on your company’s specific goals, market position, size, geographic reach, and products/services.

Once you understand what might happen, how likely it is to happen, how expensive or damaging the non-compliance consequence could be, how to prevent it from happening in various strategic ways, and how to stay on a path to compliance and profitability, you can then choose your path to compliance.

Primary risks of non-compliance

Over-collection of taxes and fees puts you at risk of:

• Customer complaints
• Inflated pricing that drives customers to competitors
• Risk of penalties
• Requirements to issue refunds

Under-collection of taxes and fees puts you at risk of:

• Audit and penalties
• Collection demands by regulators
• Damage valuation in M&A situations
• Damage valuation during bank financing

Compliance risk management services

Once you have developed your path to compliance with the support of your legal team, we can coordinate with our award-winning consultants at our partner firm, The Commpliance Group, to provide monthly reporting on areas where your business is approaching a compliance threshold. By monitoring your billing and tax data, we can inform you when to review your compliance risk strategy and make appropriate adjustments to mitigate risk.