Celent recently published their “Reg BI Day 2” report and have included La Meer Inc.‘s GRACE solution.
The report highlights the need for a scalable, integrated architecture across calendars, emails, alerts, CRMs, product shelf governance, client risk profiling, advisor documentation of recommendations, compliance oversight, supervision and an overarching need for integrated data to achieve efficiency.
Notes from La Meer Inc.
Why should you address Reg BI with an integrated approach ?
There are many aspects of Reg BI compliance as specified by the four obligations of the regulation that call for a good process in place and integrated technology to help establish the best interest practices and compliance culture in the organization.
Online management for changing policies and procedures, tied to attestation, and training of the staff can help keep the workforce deeply understanding of the various nuances expected of them.
Product governance and oversight on the products and the alternates that can be offered based on costs, fees, risks and returns analysis and tying them to the client risk profiles clients, specially ensuring the 401K Rollover processes are properly monitored for oversight is key for organizations specially in this COVID and volatile market situation.
It would be important to empower Advisors and Representatives with Advisor Portals to help gather their client information, arrive at the Client’s Risk Profile and choose the right account types, products and alternates from the curated information from the product governance process. They can keep notes and share information with clients to their Client Portals to engage with them through out the process, and ensure they are comfortable with the choices that were made for them. This can be specially helpful for the 401K Rollover process through a streamlined and managed approach of questionnaires and information gathering between Advisors and Clients to create appropriate account types, products and product transfers leaving good record keeping of all the interactions.
Compliance should be offered an online and workflow based Portal to help them manage the oversight on the choices and notes made by the Advisor and preferences of Clients from a single source of truth to ensure that the account and product choices were indeed the best possible in the interest of the clients
Clients should be offered mobile online access to their products, alternates and portfolios as they are being discussed as well as ongoing transactions, positions and monitor their performance, fees and also report complaints as they see any violations
Conflicts of interests within the organization, disclosure management, disclosures sharing and acknowledgement from clients on their Client Portal can ensure that all up-to-date disclosures are shared with clients and they are made aware of all material changes as soon as they happen.
Oversight processes and portal based access for organizational compliance need to be offered to everyone in the firm for pre-approvals of trades, outside activities, gifts, political donations, personal trade monitoring, client trade analysis for portfolio drifts, fees and billing analysis and many other functions for early identification of conflicts and violations.
Compliance can drill down to all the records and see aggregations, trends and exception red-flags to bring to their notice violations early and meet the record keeping obligations for regulatory examinations
An integrated approach and data management strategy is the best way for organizations to manage the process for the long term
GRACE – La Meer’s Reg BI cloud based web-tablet-mobile enabled offering addresses all these areas and helps you build a single source of truth for all the processes needed for Reg BI compliance. The GRACE system is modular so you can choose to use whichever modules you may need, without disturbing your existing investments in other solutions. It also helps you build the integrated data with deep drill down analytics that can help you understand your client’s needs better and offer them non-conflicted advice over the long run. A scalable web, mobile, tablet enabled tool can help you empower your organization and scale your service to many more clients with the assurance of best interest
Please reach out to us at info@lameerinc.com to see how we may be able to help you with your Reg BI compliance.
Published by
Laxmi Ramanath Founder & CEO of La Meer Inc. – A Risk and Compliance Management Software Company for Financial Institutions
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