For years, compliance consultants and lawyers have given this advice to dealerships: Appoint a compliance officer. Yet despite the numerous regulations auto retailers must consider, the compliance officer post is largely understaffed and unsolicited, experts say.
Only 14 compliance officers were accounted for in the National Automobile Dealers Association's 2018 Dealership Workforce Study, according to ESI Trends, a Largo, Fla., consulting firm that conducts the study, and so far none have come up in this year's iteration.
Meanwhile, as of April, none of the 16,571 open positions across the dealerships that use Hireology, a hiring and retention technology provider in Chicago, have compliance in the job title, according to the company.
Linda Robertson, executive director of the Association of Dealership Compliance Officers, estimates that fewer than half of U.S. dealerships have designated a compliance officer. Compliance experts posit that dealerships outsource the role or leave the responsibilities to finance-and-insurance managers, both of which they caution against.