Forty-six percent of respondents consider sanctions compliance to be a growing concern, and 63 percent say it is consuming more time, money and personnel than ever, according to a Deloitte survey of 388 executives and managers from around the world.

But firms do not have fully automated compliance processes. Most companies have been deploying IT solutions at the initial detection stage and then manually investigating the alerts generated by those systems.

Just 19 percent of respondents work for firms that have fully automated this process, but more than twice as many (52 percent) expect to do so in three years' time.

As automation is expected to increase, the number of companies with largely manual processes (especially at the front end) is expected to drop from 37 percent to less than half that (17 percent) in the next three years, Deloitte said.

Global regulatory pressure has become intense. Yet with tightening budgets and lower headcounts, only one in four companies' compliance staff receives training at best, just once every two years, the survey found.

"As [the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control] OFAC continues to be more rigorous in its oversight of financial institutions and international regulators simultaneously increase their own vigilance, more organizations are responding to regulatory actions than they had in the past 10 years," said Michael Zeldin, global leader, Anti-Money Laundering/Trade Sanctions Services for Deloitte Financial Advisory Services.

"At the same time, financial institutions have to contend with shrinking compliance budgets and headcounts. This is a combination fraught with danger," he added.

The survey revealed that companies increasingly are using risk-based approaches to sanctions compliance.

Of the 44 percent of survey respondents who reported their companies had a well-defined, sanctions-specific compliance program in place, 70 percent were either completing or had completed a formal sanctions risk assessment within the past two years.

Meanwhile, the Deloitte report highlighted that while sanctions compliance — from setting strategy to overseeing lists — can be run at a global, regional or local level, a global approach is the most popular.

It found that 55 percent of respondents' companies set sanctions compliance policy at the global level and 40 percent develop and oversee sanctions compliance and procedures at a global level.

More than one-third (39 percent) of financial executives indicated their companies' board and C-suite executives communicate on sanctions compliance, across all geographic regions, coordinating efforts globally. Among the executives participating in the survey, 40 percent were board members, chief executive officers and other C-level executives. Fifty percent of respondents' organizations had annual revenues greater than US$5 billion.

Respondents were geographically located in Asia-Pacific (32 percent), North America (24 percent), Western Europe (28 percent), Middle East and Africa (7 percent), Latin America (5 percent) and Eastern Europe (4 percent).