Welcome back to our Compliance Superhero Series! Every month, we highlight a compliance professional who we feel is doing excellent work and ask them about their background, their thoughts on the industry, and any hidden superpowers they have. I’ve reached out to Marvel about adding them to the next phase of the MCU, but in the meantime, you can get to know them here. This month, we’re highlighting Kristina Sacco, a Lead Compliance Analyst at Geneva Financial. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Welcome! Tell me a little bit about yourself and your role at Geneva
Hi! I’m a Lead Compliance Analyst, primarily responsible for advertising compliance and regulatory examination management.
What was your path to the compliance space?
I started in the mortgage industry. At first I was making appointments for the loan officers, then I got an opportunity to be in origination, creating the loans themselves. I did that for a few years, when I realized that I was having more fun solving problems than just looking for the best interest rate. A senior leader in the company I was working for realized that and approached me with a compliance opportunity.
What compels you about the work that you do?
I love learning. I like to investigate, to look into things and figure out how they function. If I don’t understand something, I’ll research it online, read articles, go on YouTube—anything I can do to get all the information about the situation.
What’s your biggest piece of advice for a successful compliance program?
It’s all about communication and building relationships. You should be asking yourself, “am I listening more than I’m speaking?” You can only really understand where you need to go when you’re listening for the right cues.
What tools–software or otherwise–are most important for your work?
I have to give a huge shoutout to PerformLine, because advertising compliance is such a broad landscape. Using PerformLine helps me identify and isolate instances that I should look at. And it doesn’t come off as punitive; it’s just giving me an opportunity to look through everything and make determinations based on company policy.
What do you see happening within the compliance space in the next 1 to 2 years?
There’s so much going on right now, I’m just taking time and ingesting everything I can. I was very interested in the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision and specifically how that might impact the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And it’s also an election year, so with so much going on, it goes back to just making sure that I’m informed and listening to how the news is going to impact downstream systems.
What’s your secret superpower (something you’re surprisingly good at, work-related or otherwise!)
I really like people. I genuinely enjoy meeting and networking with people, learning from their experiences is inspiring and to share with others is powerful. That ability to just sit back and soak in all that knowledge—it’s like a superpower.
