Regulatory Compliance

While everyone agrees there were many causes behind the current credit crisis, lax regulatory policies and controls are sighted a primary reason for the biggest recession of our times. Large players accumulated unsustainable exposures on their balance sheets, with little regard to the systemic risk posed by such transactions.

With the failures of Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers & Merrill Lynch behind them, the SECs, BISs and FSAs of the world are set to introduce unprecedented changes to the compliance world. There are plans for regulating hedge funds, starting centralized clearing of OTC derivatives, establishing a global regulatory authority and so on. 

Financial firms are facing the heat on multiple fronts, owing to these changes. While margins and revenues have declined in recessionary market conditions, operational spend on compliance has increased manifold. This pattern is expected to continue through 2010.

We believe that in order to maximize value from IT spend on compliance, firms must align their otherwise compartmentalized technology systems. They must ensure an appropriate level of automation that mitigates operational and legal risk associated with non-compliance throughout their process workflows. And they must do so while meeting all regulatory requirements, and yet minimizing time, attention and money on non-revenue generating activities.

Our reporting platforms, data warehousing & business intelligence services have made us the ideal partner of choice for many top tier financial firms and regulatory bodies for over 15 years. Below is a brief summary of our solutions in compliance and risk management :-

• Application Risk Assessment - Headstrong offers conducting KRI based application and data-level assessments to evaluate and quantify inherent and residual risks in order to determine the extent of potential threats to IT systems throughout its SDLC and beyond. The output of this exercise tiers applications into risk-based custom groups where specific solutions can be applied or controls identified controls for reducing or eliminating risk. These assessment can be broadly or narrowly tailored to the specific needs of the customers.

• Data Protection - Our primary aim with these solutions is to obfuscate sensitive and personal customer and employee identification data. Every refresh of data in non-production environments can be requested through a newly process integrated into firm-specific SDLC process. We can also help in creation of policies and procedures around data masking. Headstrong offers the following data protection services:
  
  • Approach and strategy creation
    
  • Tool selection
    
  • Implementation and integration of tools and processes

 Our other flagships offerings in this space are : 

• Basel II
• KYC (Know Your Customer)
• AML (Anti-money laundering)
• OATS Reporting
• Suitability
• RegNMS
• MiFID
• Liquidity Risk

Contact us for additional information or to schedule a meeting.