Ensuring Your Compliance Role Matches the Moment with Jay Cohen (Ep. 18)
Key Takeaways
- Jay Cohen shares his unconventional path into compliance, starting as a prosecutor before navigating multi-state regulatory investigations and ultimately becoming Chief Compliance Officer at QBE Insurance North America.
- Effective compliance programs cannot be measured solely by activity metrics like training counts or policy rollouts; true effectiveness is determined by whether operational changes are communicated, implemented, and actually stick in daily routines.
- Drawing on Ben Heineman's philosophy, compliance leaders constantly balance the 'partner vs. guardian' dilemma, knowing when to support business goals and when to protect the organization.
- Building trust with business teams requires compliance professionals to get out of their offices, spend time with operators, and build genuine relationships so guidance is properly understood and valued.
- Assuming positive intent when business teams push back transforms resistance into an opportunity to listen, recalibrate, and ensure rules are practical for real-world operations.
In this episode of Compliance Chronicles, Liisa Thomas talks with Jay Cohen about what it really means to lead compliance in a global insurance business, and why activity alone doesn’t prove an effective compliance program. Jay shares his journey from 20 years in New York government (including 10 years as a prosecutor in Brooklyn) into legal and regulatory compliance roles at a variety of companies including Prudential, Assurant, and ultimately QBE Insurance.
He explains how he “fell into” compliance during a nationwide class action and multi‑state regulatory investigation at Prudential, where his first assignment was telling offices around the country to keep boxes and boxes of files. From there, he moved into health insurance and leadership roles, eventually becoming a chief compliance officer and consultant before stepping into his current role at QBE.
This episode covers:
- Why regulatory compliance feels similar to appellate work: understanding the rules, telling the story, and helping business teams make those rules work in practice
- Jay’s “pre and post” philosophy of compliance: knowing which rules apply and knowing whether the organization is actually following them
- The challenge of rules that are constantly changing, not always practical, and sometimes at odds with what the business wants to do
- The partner vs. guardian dilemma, inspired by Ben Heineman’s work: knowing when to support the business and when to protect it, and getting the business to understand why
- Why counting training sessions, policies, or helpline calls doesn’t truly measure compliance effectiveness
- How to focus on whether changes are communicated, implemented, and whether they stick in daily operations
- The importance of getting out of your office, spending time with business teams, and building relationships so people know and trust you when you say “partner” or “guardian”
- Assuming positive intent, especially when teams resist or push back, and using that resistance as a cue to listen and recalibrate
- Why compliance is a “terrific way to make a living” if you care about understanding, analysis, communication, and helping companies do the right thing
If you enjoyed this episode of Compliance Chronicles, please consider subscribing and leaving a rating or review—it helps others discover the show and supports more conversations with leaders across privacy, risk, and compliance. Follow Compliance Chronicles on your favorite podcast platform (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and more) and connect with Liisa on LinkedIn so you don’t miss future episodes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Jay Cohen in Compliance Chronicles Episode 18?
Jay Cohen is the Chief Compliance Officer for QBE Insurance North America. In this episode, he joins host Liisa Thomas to discuss his journey from Brooklyn prosecutor to insurance compliance leader.
How do you measure compliance program effectiveness?
True compliance effectiveness isn't measured by counting training sessions or helpline calls, but by evaluating whether necessary changes are communicated, implemented, and actually stick in daily business operations.
What is the partner vs. guardian dilemma in compliance?
Inspired by Ben Heineman's work on general counsels, the partner versus guardian dilemma involves knowing when to support business initiatives and when to act as a protective barrier to manage regulatory risk.
Liisa Thomas: We are here with another compliance Chronicles episode. And this time I am delighted to welcome Jay Cohen. So Jay, I'm going to turn it over to you to introduce yourself briefly and then we'll get started.
Jay Cohen: Terrific. Thanks a lot, Lise, for giving me this opportunity. So I am the Chief Compliance Officer for QBE Insurance North America. QBE is a global insurance company based in Sydney, Australia. Here in North America, we are primarily a commercial property and casualty insurer, a liability insurer, and a stop loss health insurance insurer.
Liisa Thomas: walk us on that path to how you got to this role.
Jay Cohen: So I started my compliance career, like a lot of folks, totally by accident. I spent the first part of my career in the government here in New York City, 10 years as a prosecutor in Brooklyn, and another 10 years working for the city of New York and the state of New York. And one of my colleagues and best friends in that part of my career became the chief compliance officer for Prudential's insurance, life insurance business based in Newark. and asked me to come work for him. I didn't know anything about legal and regulatory compliance and I learned... very quickly how challenging being a compliance officer could be. Prudential was in the midst of a nationwide class action lawsuit challenging its business practices and combined with a multi-state insurance regulator investigation. as the low person on the totem pole, my introduction to compliance was to go around to Prudential life insurance offices around the country and tell them that they had to keep boxes and boxes of files. So I got a sort of an early introduction into how popular a regulatory compliance officer could be. From there, I got opportunities to work in health insurance for other life insurance companies. And I spent eight years as the chief compliance officer here in lower Manhattan for a company called Assurant. And it's while I was there at Assurance that I met my predecessor here at QBE And when he got ready to retire, he asked me if I wanted to be considered to take his place. I had just spent three years as a compliance consultant and I was ready to get back into being a full-time chief compliance officer. So here I am.
Liisa Thomas: So what kept you hooked on compliance?
Jay Cohen: Well, it's not dramatically different than being a prosecutor. When I was in the DA's office, I spent a good part of my career doing appellate work. And appellate work was all about trying to research, understand, and articulate a story. in a way that got to the heart of the matter, And in a lot of ways, regulatory compliance is very similar. We have to help understand what the rules are. figure out a way to articulate them to business people who have a different way of thinking, different skill sets, and then help them figure out how to make those rules work for them. the other thing is that people in companies want to do the right thing. they're always outliers, but by and large, people in companies like QBE want to do the right thing. And so it's our job to help them do what they want to do anyway.
Liisa Thomas: So that sort of leads us to the next question, which is the challenges that you faced along the way and how you've overcome them.
Jay Cohen: So my philosophy of compliance can be reduced to two words, which is pre and post.
Liisa Thomas: Hmm
Jay Cohen: The pre is what are the rules that apply to us based on what we do for a living? And the post is how do we know that we're following those rules? And all the stuff in the middle is the part of the business. And that's one of the biggest challenges of all. Sometimes the rules are challenging, they change a lot. Sometimes it's hard to figure out how they apply to the business. And the post can be even harder to figure out day to day, are those rules being followed or not? But all that work in the middle is really challenging to keep on top of. And it gets even more challenging because the rules themselves are not always easy to understand, they're not always practical, they don't always fit real world experiences, and from time to time, they are putting roadblocks in front of what the business folks
Liisa Thomas: Mm-hmm.
Jay Cohen: want to do. But to me, the biggest challenge of all was the. the subject of a book that Ben Heineman wrote when he was the general counsel of GE about the role of the general counsel. And he said,
Liisa Thomas: Mm.
Jay Cohen: the most important thing that a GC can do is figure out when to be the partner to the business and when to be the guardian of the business. And to me, that is what makes this job really, really challenging. First of all, I have to figure out when to be the partner and when to be the guardian. And then I have to get the business to appreciate why I've chosen that path or the other. I And the other thing is, and this gets back to this debate, how do we know we have an effective compliance program? And to me, Too many times, My compliance colleagues, try to measure the effectiveness of our compliance program by our activity. What I do, what I and my team do, how many training programs do we have, how many new policies do we roll out, how many calls do we get to our helpline. That measures what I'm doing. But the effectiveness of my compliance program is demonstrated. by two areas One, if a change needs to be made, how do we know that that change is being communicated
Liisa Thomas: Right.
Jay Cohen: and implemented? And two, the second part is, how do we know it sticks? When companies get into trouble, was that the rules we're not being followed by too many people out in the field in the business world every day. And so we needed to be able to understand where that was happening and why and do something about it. But if we didn't have information about what was going on in our Salesforce every day, we couldn't tell whether we had an effective compliance program or not.
Liisa Thomas: So things that you've learned over the course of your career, whether it's the things that you would repeat or the things that you would avoid.
Jay Cohen: One of the things I've learned, is I have to get out of my office. I have to get out of my cube. I need to spend as much time with the business folks as I can. the most important thing I can do is understand the business and the people who are in it and establish relationships with them. And there have been times when I think I probably didn't do as well on that as I should have. And as a result, when I was trying to be their partner or their guardian, They didn't know me well enough to appreciate or value that I'd made the right choice, not just for me, but for them. And that's a hard lesson and it's not an easy thing to do. So to me, that's probably the most important lesson of all. assume positive intent. I think that's really important. It doesn't help a compliance officer to assume that if somebody doesn't want to do what we think they ought to do, that they're doing that for the wrong reasons. They're doing that either because they don't understand it or because the balance between what they're being asked to do and what it's going to take to do it, it seems out of whack to them. if people are giving you a hard time, well, then you need to spend a little more time. And maybe at the end of the day, there's something to what they say.
Liisa Thomas: So Jay, last question. Parting advice for people either starting out in their career or folks that have been doing this for a long time and are looking for a little bit of inspiration.
Jay Cohen: I think this is a terrific way to make a living. I really do. Now people look at me when I say that like, this guy is crazy because it's very hard, it's very challenging, you're not always the most welcome, but you have an enormous opportunity if you like to understand, analyze, evaluate, communicate, and make a difference. at the end of the day, we're trying to help companies do the right thing. I know that's that sounds pretty trite, but that really is what we do for a living. it seems like it should be a black and white way to do things, but it's not. because their opportunities for interpretation and evaluation and prioritization and what's really important and does this really make a difference? You have to appreciate that, but that's also what makes it challenging. And it also is what makes you have enormous opportunities to figure out how to navigate that. And it's not going to go away. mean, rules are going to exist forever and companies are going to need our wise counsel. So I think it gives folks just an incredible opportunity to make a difference for their organization and for the customers and in some cases for the wider community, which a lot of the rules that we deal with are meant to to help address.
Liisa Thomas: I love it. So what we do does have meaning and it is a good way to make a living. well, thank you, Jay.
Jay Cohen: you.
Liisa Thomas: for making the time.
Jay Cohen: Thanks a lot.