 | Casey Beckman is Vice President, Global Compliance and Fraud, for RGA. She is a highly skilled financial services compliance professional with over 20 years of experience in building and transforming compliance and risk programs for global companies. Casey joined RGA in 2016 and leads the vision, strategy, and execution of the compliance operating model for RGA’s global operations. Before joining RGA, Casey held various compliance roles for Aegon/Transamerica, a leading provider of life insurance, retirement, and investment solutions. Casey earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management from Mount Mercy University, and an MBA from the University of Phoenix.
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Paul Carroll
Casey, thank you for joining me today. Would you share a bit about your role at RGA and your overall industry experience?
Casey Beckman
I’ve been with RGA for eight years, and I’m currently RGA’s global chief compliance officer. I have been in the compliance field within the insurance industry for over 20 years. Prior to RGA, I worked at Aegon/Transamerica for 17 years and held various compliance roles both on the insurance side as well as the asset management side. I have experience in leading all aspects of a global compliance program, including artificial intelligence governance, financial crimes monitoring, economic sanctions compliance, code of conduct policy compliance, regulatory change management, compliance assurance testing, and directing investigations.
Paul Carroll
Based on your experience, what do you see as a major risk trend for the insurance industry?
Casey Beckman
The use of artificial intelligence comes to mind. This emerging risk has been impossible to ignore as we continue to use AI in both our personal and work lives. Along with this use comes an increase in compliance and ethical concerns such as data protection, AI transparency, and explainability, and mitigating biases that AI could create. It's important to remember that AI was built by humans and is susceptible to flaws and errors.
RGA currently has an AI governance strategy project underway to ensure we have appropriate controls and governance over the use of AI to mitigate risks posed by AI. The project team includes various business leaders, data scientists, experts in AI technology, risk management, compliance, and legal. I can’t stress enough how important it is that organizations acknowledge that AI risk is owned by everyone, and everyone has an obligation to use AI responsibly.
Paul Carroll
What role can AI, data analytics, and emerging technologies play in mitigating compliance risks related to fraud, cybersecurity, and other areas?
Casey Beckman
I think AI will significantly impact how compliance teams monitor risks.
AI has the ability to analyze a large amount of data and can quickly identify patterns and anomalies that can help with suspicious activity detection, whether it be financial transaction patterns or monitoring for cyber threats.
AI can also help with:
- Sanctions screening that could help reduce and clear false positives.
- Knowing your customer, to help determine if there are high-risk clients that would require additional due diligence or monitoring.
- Overall compliance program health, such as metrics and reporting on key performance indicators (KPIs).
- Streamlining compliance processes, such as policy creation and maintenance, policy monitoring and adherence, and control development and assurance.
- Assisting with investigations, including performing data analytics.
- Gathering information, including from unstructured sources such as notes on paper or in PDFs and from audio and video, whose review has historically been extremely time-consuming.
- Crafting reports, at least by providing a rough draft that provides a substantial starting point for the compliance officer.
Paul Carroll
How is the evolving AI regulatory landscape across global markets affecting risk management practices and compliance requirements?
Casey Beckman
We are beginning to see more momentum from regulators in this space, however, there are still many regulators that have yet to propose or enact regulations. Risk and compliance professionals need to ensure that any AI governance framework being developed is agile enough that as new regulations come out, the governance framework can adapt quickly to new requirements.
Paul Carroll
What skills and mindsets will risk and compliance professionals need to develop to stay ahead of rapidly evolving AI risk facing the insurance industry?
Casey Beckman
Knowledge is power! There are obvious things like attending conferences, obtaining AI governance certifications, and building your network, which can help you stay ahead, but it’s also important to not lose sight of the fact AI governance is a team effort. It’s important to stay connected to your business leaders, research and development teams, data scientists, IT teams, etc. to align with your organization’s AI strategy to ensure the governance continues to mitigate the risks as AI evolves. Just like being agile with the regulations, the governance also must be agile and align with your organization’s AI strategy goals.
