Strategies to Transform Your Compliance Program with Technology - #5: Tech-enablement

Regulatory Technology (RegTech) has come a long way in recent years. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies like machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and robotic process automation (RPA) are being integrated into compliance technology at an increasing rate, enabling better data sharing and communication among different systems. RegTech platforms are also being consolidated and interconnected to provide a 360-degree view of potential risk and misconduct.

RegTech can give your employees, and yourself, tools and processes to be more efficient and effective at managing day-to-day compliance tasks and mitigating risk.

So, how do you do it? We've put together a series of strategies for implementing technology that will empower you and your team to build a better, more efficient compliance program.

Strategy #5 - Identify the tasks you can tech-enable

Adopting new technology is a great opportunity to review your compliance program’s processes and make improvements. For example, manual processes shouldn’t always be automated because they might just be bad processes.

When thinking about your day-to-day responsibilities as a compliance officer, consider the areas where you can maximize the value/return for your efforts. And don’t forget: technology and automation aren’t meant to replace human judgement. While automation can help compliance programs operate more efficiently, regulators still expect compliance oversight and input from actual humans. You and your team need to understand the technology’s findings and ensure that you act on them, otherwise you’ll find yourself in front of the regulator unable to explain why you didn’t act.

Here are some items that can be helpful to tech-enable:

1. Compliance management
   • Compliance testing/annual review
   • Internal remediation and enhancements
   • Marketing reviews
   • Regulatory filings preparation and management
   • Side letter management
   • Compliance policy management
   • Activity tracking
2. Supervision/code of ethics
   • Trade surveillance (personal and firm-level)
   • eComms surveillance and archiving
   • Employee forms and questionnaires
   • Pre-clearance/reporting of gifts and entertainment, outside business activities, political contributions, etc.
   • Cybersecurity - training, phishing tests, multi-factor authentications, password management, etc.
   • KYC/CIP monitoring
   • Integration with other systems used internally - employee expense tracking, new hire automation, etc.
   • eLearning/employee and consultant training
   • Vendor management/due diligence
3. Reporting and analytics

Download our guide

What do you need to know as technology’s role in compliance management grows? This guide provides six strategies, insights, and resources about tech-enabling compliance, whether you’ve already started your digitization efforts or don’t know where to begin. Download our guide for our complete series of strategies.

Download

How we help 

Automate and streamline compliance and risk management tasks with ACA’s Regulatory Technology solutions. 

ACA’s ComplianceAlpha^® software platform helps you automate manual tasks, identify risk through enhanced surveillance capabilities, derive deeper insights through connected data, simplify the submission of requests and disclosures for employees, and free up valuable time for more strategic, higher-value tasks. Our award-winning regulatory technology platform transforms risk and compliance management for over 1,250 leading financial services firms worldwide. By bringing together risk and compliance activities, surveillance, testing, and analytics in one platform, ComplianceAlpha provides a unified view of risks and behavior across their firm. 

See our RegTech solutions in action

Click here to watch on demand demos that illustrate ComplianceAlpha's functionality and explains how it can elevate your firm's daily compliance functions.