Five years after agreeing to pay a record fine for sanctions violations, BNP Paribas has made structural changes to its compliance division — an effort to strengthen the independence of the bank’s compliance function and improve ethical culture.

The efforts have included setting compliance as an independent function that reports directly to the chief executive, as well as moving part of the bank’s head office for sanctions compliance — the unit that sets the global sanctions compliance standards for the bank — to New York from Paris in 2014, according to Eric Young, chief compliance officer for BNP Paribas Americas, who spoke Tuesday at a panel hosted by the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Risk & Compliance.