Strategic corporate governance

Compliance: a guideline for good corporate governance

The Swiss Post Board of Directors is responsible for ensuring that Swiss Post Group complies with the relevant standards and provisions. This also includes rules for ethically correct behaviour. To ensure that employees know how to behave in specific situations, Swiss Post is committed to a modern compliance system.

Does the purchase of a new computer have to be put out to tender? Should the counter staff at a post office accept 10,000 francs in cash? Should a project manager accept the wine that a business partner brings round at Christmas? Employees have to find answers to delicate questions quickly and reliably in the course of their everyday work. That employees at all levels act in accordance with the law and ethical standards is to the credit of an effective compliance system.

Anchored at the highest level

Swiss Post is continually developing its compliance system and adapting it to changing needs. With the introduction of the new Group structure, Swiss Post's Board of Directors took the opportunity to anchor compliance management at the highest level. “A functioning compliance system is part of good corporate governance. It is just as important for Swiss Post as a company with a universal service obligation as for a listed public company,” says Adriano P. Vassalli, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors and Head of the Audit, Risk & Compliance Committee.

The right measures for each unit

For Swiss Post as a diversified company, the biggest challenge with respect to compliance is to define and anchor the right measures for each unit. After all, the requirements in the financial services market are different from those that apply in the logistics or passenger transport markets. Compliance management at Swiss Post is therefore based on the business activities of the Group, its subsidiaries and their units of activity, and the associated risks.