The Constant Updating of Compliance: How Official Judgments and Publications Impact Companies

What should compliance experts and company lawyers remember every time a judgment so relevant that the Court itself makes it public (as happened a few days ago) is published, or every time PROFECO or another authority publishes a press release in the media about an issue they consider so relevant that they do so? Attention! This is equally relevant for marketing departments, advertising agencies, in-house lawyers, heads of regulatory areas, and you will see why now.

Let's recall that international best practice guidelines in compliance dictate that we must be attentive not only to the publication of constitutional reforms, laws, international treaties, regulations, official standards, circulars, guidelines, etc., but also to relevant judicial and administrative resolutions that imply new legal risks for the company, and even to official and unofficial pronouncements, press releases, and similar that could imply direct or indirect risks for organizations. A perfect example is PROFECO's Consumer Magazine, which reflects potential risks for a certain type of product or service, or even entire sectors of the economy that we must interpret and then apply. Another example is the press releases issued by many authorities within their area of competence.

In summary, compliance programs must be LIVING instruments that evolve with time and circumstances, as they are based on risk maps that are updated as much as legislation, governments, and other circumstances are updated. In recent months, changes have been unusually rapid, so a program created three years ago may no longer be useful for anything other than decoration.

Practical Recommendations: A compliance program is not complete without a section or entire chapter that detects ALL risks in consumer protection matters, which implies at least a review of advertising and commercial information, labels, warranties, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and general consumption, which integrates, just as in all other sections, risk detection, documentation, implementation, training of the involved areas, and final evaluation of the detected risk. And to begin, update your compliance program with experts and keep it alive all the time! The reason for doing so is that failure to do so can result in multi-million dollar sanctions, as well as even prohibitions on marketing products or services, possible criminal liability for the company, not to mention the reputational risk, which is even greater as it affects the brand value in question.