It is crucial to ensure that customers can exercise their rights

What's your name?

Joanna Bayle-Kiernan

What position do you hold?

Compliance Manager, MLRO, DPO

How long have you held the position?

2 years & 3 months

What are your day to day responsibilities?

Managing the compliance and enterprise risk management progammes for Shop Direct Ireland, which operates as both a retail and financial services firm through its range of customer payment plans.

What is your professional background?

I began my professional career in 2002 with Royal Bank of Canada, whilst living in Jersey in the Channel Islands. At that time Jersey was considered a centre of excellence for Offshore Financial Services and was advanced in its regulatory supervision. I then returned to Ireland in 2007 and have continued my profession in compliance with various financial services organisations, both global and local, in private banking/investment, life insurance and now consumer credit.

You are speaking at our GDPR Summit in April. What are you speaking about?

I will be presenting a case study on “practical steps to ensure marketing success, how to balance regulatory compliance with practical commercial needs.

In 2015 Shop Direct fully transitioned from a catalogue business to Ireland’s largest pureplay online retailer. The challenges we face with GDPR relate to the many legacy systems we manage for processing customer data and customer’s marketing preferences. It is crucial to ensure that customers can exercise their rights, in particular to opt in or out of marketing communications and we have an obligation to make that as easy as possible.

Tell me about yourself away from work?

I am married with two daughters, so outside of work my time is used with school runs, activities, caring for my family and I try to squeeze in some personal training sessions, to keep myself healthy.

Tell us something very few people know about you?

From an early age I was obsessed with horses and my one ambition was to become a professional showjumper. When I left school I moved to Graz in Austria to train whilst working in an equestrian centre, with future plans to move to Switzerland. Unfortunately due to a motoring accident that dream came to an end and I was forced to take another career path.

Joanna Bayle-Kiernan is appearing at The GDPR Summit. The agenda and further details for this important national event at Croke Park on April 12th, are available atwww.gdpr18.com