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Journal of Banking & Finance Vol. 107 2019

Incentives and culture in risk compliance

Elizabeth Sheedy; Le Zhang; Kenny Chi Ho Tam

Macquarie University

open access

Abstract

In the finance industry, risk compliance has become an important issue after numerous policy violations resulting in significant costs for financial institutions and society as a whole. We run a lab-in-the-field experiment with 269 finance professionals, to investigate the effects of financial incentives and workplace culture on risk compliance. Relative to variable remuneration (linked to expected profits), fixed remuneration increases the proportion of people complying by as much as 25.1 percentage points. This is achieved with no diminution in productivity. Relative to a profit-focused workplace culture, a risk-focused workplace culture increases the proportion of people complying by 16.3 percentage points.

DOI
10.1016/j.jbankfin.2019.105611
Volume
107
Pages
105611
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref bibtex:phds-export.bib

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