Using Technology To Improve Compliance

I read an interesting article on FT Advisor recently that socialised the idea that technology could be used to help with regulatory compliance. It was perhaps not new news! But it was useful.

This article paid particular attention to advice given by advisors to clients. The recording and accessing of that data and to what extent technology could be used to do far more than humans left to their own devices.

I liked the quote by Ian McKenna, director Financial Technology Research Centre, where he says,

“Those firms that are trying to do their Mifid reporting without using technology are making their lives a lot harder”.

He is right and to those firms that point to Excel spreadsheets as examples of use of technology, are kidding themselves, living in the past and good luck when that spreadsheet corrupts, or the MI guy that produces it, leaves with the password!

Quite simply technology has moved on at such a pace, I suspect that many risk management and compliance professionals would be hard pushed to even be aware of all the cool stuff that is out there. So well done FT Advisor for at least drawing attention to this subject.

Looking at the tens of thousands of firms entering the SM&CR regime December 9, 2019 most firms with more than 50 employees are going to fail to comply with these regulations. Particularly with respect to ensuring all in the enterprise understand the Conduct Rules and how they impact their own role. And as a Senior Manager, just how are you going to evidence those you delegate work to, are indeed fit and proper to execute that work?

Relying on the annual e-learning records has already been torpedoed by the Regulator as tick box compliance and not appropriate. And expecting employees to learn, understand and retain this training is… optimistic!

I would go so far as to say that, any firm not using Artificial Intelligence to continually asses and repair employee knowledge and competency will not be able to evidence to a standard required, this means individual Senior Managers are personally exposed. FT Advisor is correct, there is proven, award-winning AI out there that will transform how you land employee compliance and one of them happens to be a purple elephant called Clever Nelly.