There has been a sharp increase in how often regulatory and legal risk is discussed at board meetings, with 43% of companies discussing the subject at every meeting, up from 23% in 2012, according to the latest Legal Week Intelligence Corporate Risk Benchmarker, published in association with Deloitte. Risk was an 'infrequent' discussion at just 18% of companies.

Legal risk was a board issue for 70% of companies with mid-sized turnover (£500m to £1bn) and least commonly discussed at board level at companies with a turnover of £1bn to £5bn (25%). 

"If there is an increasing compliance workload and an increase in board attention in some companies, it is perhaps because regulators and the authorities have been trending towards higher fines and more aggressive investigations," said Robert Cummins, assistant general counsel at satellite communications company Intelsat (pictured). "The bottom line is that the regulators are getting better at making the management feel the heat." 

The areas with the most significant focus for legal and compliance functions were data privacy and security (79%), bribery and corruption (73%) and leaks of confidential/price-sensitive information (56%). 

Compliance is becoming a more expensive business, with 44% of respondents saying they had spent more on their compliance programmes over the past 12 months, compared to 36% spending the same and just 3% that had spent less. 

Compliance spend is expected to increase over the next 12 months, driven by new laws and regulations (67%), increased activity by regulatory authorities (65%) and increased focus on regulatory risk and ethical conduct by the board (61%).

The research also found organisational complexity is the most pressing obstacle for effective compliance, followed by lack of resources.

There has been a decline of 10% in respondents citing growth in emerging markets as a reason for increased legal and compliance workload.

Julia Chain, managing director of Huron Legal, said: "Generally, we are living in an era of increasing regulation, where there are always new rules and firms are constantly questioning what regulation is going to come next."