ISO 19600:2014 is a compliance standard introduced by the International Organization for Standardisation (ISO) in 2014.
Contents
Origins
Standards Australia proposed a new ISO standard, based on the existing Australian standard "AS 3806 - Compliance Programs", which was issued in 1998 and updated in 2006. This standard is more widely used in the financial industry, being endorsed by Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. The published version of ISO 19600:2014 is similar to AS 3806:2006 standard, and will replace it.
The draft stage of ISO 19600 was completed in April 2014; the final version was published on 5 December 2014.
Structure of the standard
ISO 19600 helps organisations establish, develop, evaluate, and maintain a compliance management system. It brings together separate strands of compliance management and risk management, and its processes align very closely with ISO 31000, another risk management standard.
Many existing compliance standards focus on one specific regulatory requirement or topic area; ISO 19600 aims to unify these, so organisations can work within a single framework rather than several different ones focussing on different standards. Unlike PS 980, ISO does not mandate any specific auditing requirements. ISO 19600 is "based on the principles of good governance, proportionality, transparency and sustainability".
Like other related ISO standards, it emphasises the use of a Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle.