Law360 interviewed Fordham Law alumnus Norm Ashkenas ’92 about his twenty-year career in compliance and his current position as chief compliance officer for Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC and Fidelity Personal and Workplace Advisors LLC.
You’re a graduate of Fordham University School of Law. Are you involved in Fordham’s new compliance program?
I’m not currently involved, but I’m certainly supportive of those efforts. I think it demonstrates where compliance has gone in the last 20, 25 years. There were no such programs then, and now there are schools building them.
How has the field or philosophy of compliance changed since you entered it?
I’ve been in compliance for almost 20 years now. I have seen three primary changes. One is the type of people in the roles, one is around the role itself, and finally the tools we’re using.
When I started, compliance was more of an operations function. Flashing forward, many still have those backgrounds, but with the expansion of regulation and advisory interpretation of those regulations, there’s been an influx of people like me with legal backgrounds. A lot more business backgrounds are needed now because the advisory services require a deep understanding of how they work, so that’s been a change.