117: Replacing the Abstract with Data

LeftFoot - Fresh Conversations on the Business of Law

We chat with Matt Galvin of Anheuser-Busch

Over the last three years, Matt Galvin has executed change and embraced the use of data in decision making as the Global Vice President for Ethics and Compliance at Anheuser-Busch InBev. Following a significant global acquisition, Matt talks with us about both the volume of compliance matters and the risk factors associated with the newly combined organization.

To fulfill their compliance mission, Matt and his team created a living-breathing model to access risk quickly and educate the business about future risk. Focusing on the data associated with potential compliance risk and the risk of the relationships present as the most efficient way to deal with the hundreds of millions of transactions of the combined organization.

Their initiative started with a pilot where they looked at data in terms of sets and systems and determined where the data sets were that represented the most risk. They would then focus in and filter up and down in search of other risk factors. Pleased with this approach they quickly determined that training someone to do this could take months and would require an audit layer and additional oversight. To address this concern they took the project a step further creating 12 workflows and visuals to attach the model to different systems and situations.

Now armed with data and responding with full transparency to the business, a project that started as a compliance project is now a transparency project. By risk scoring– every transaction, every vendor, every investigation – the business is taking notice where compliance risk is being identified. Access to this information has also allowed for faster decision making. Risk profiles are used to investigate related issues more thoroughly.

In evaluating compliance matters, lawyers typically look at the same facts over and over in the abstract. By accessing multiple data sets, pulling the data from different data sources to build a compliance model, AB-InBev is relying on the truth of the data present. Creating a compliance model based on real data versus the abstract the data sets and systems will get smarter as will our teams.

Matt Galvin, Global Vice President for Ethics and Compliance at Anheuser-Busch InBev, is skilled in Corporate Social Responsibility, Economic Sanctions, Anti-corruption, Dispute Resolution, and Big Data Analytics.