Around the world, compliance professionals continue to struggle with the pace and breadth of evolving regulations and, more than ever, need the support of the Board of Directors to deliver effective risk management.

So says a new survey conducted by Thomson Reuters of more than 800 compliance practitioners at financial services firms in 62 countries. “While important, the role of compliance should be to advise and assist the business, and in the current environment where compliance resource is stretched, the business itself should be encouraged to own its policies and procedures,” a report accompanying the results says.

A third of all respondents expect their compliance budgets to be the same or less at the end of 2013, even though 81 percent are preparing for an increase in the volume of regulatory information they face.

The survey also found that, at large firms, compliance staff may find most of their working week devoted to redrafting policies and procedures to keep pace with evolving regulations. Forty percent spent at least half a working day or more each week on this. In the UK, nearly 31 percent of respondents said they spent more than 10 hours per week tracking and analyzing regulatory developments, significantly higher than in any other region.

Globally, nearly  36 percent of firms spent four hours or more each week preparing reports for the board. There were regional differences, however. In the U.S., 42 percent of firms said they spent less than one hour creating and amending these reports, a significantly higher percentage than in any other region. That statistic raised a red flag for the report's authors.

“Compliance teams who find themselves doing very little work on preparing reports for their board should be asking questions,” they wrote. “Boards need to be proactive in gathering effective management information that provides them with adequate oversight and control of the firm's activities, but where this is lacking compliance can take the initiative and submit reports nevertheless. Those compliance teams which reported spending less than an hour per week on this important task may need to reconsider their approach to, and relationship with, the board.”

The majority of firms, globally, reported that they spent less than three hours a week communicating with the legal function. In the U.S., however, 40 percent of firms spent four hours or more doing so, with what was called a “whopping” 15 percent setting aside more than 10 hours per week.

“The close relationship between legal and compliance may be in part down to the fact that in the U.S. the majority of compliance officers are themselves lawyers by background,” the report suggests. “It may be that they seek assurance from the legal function more regularly than other jurisdictions, who may only contact legal when something that clearly falls within [their need for review].”