Thomson Reuters today announced a solution to help streamline compliance workflows and provide simultaneous access to regulatory and market content. Thomson Reuters Eikon for Compliance Management, a version of its flagship Eikon desktop dedicated to trading floor compliance, combines Thomson Reuters market leading global regulatory intelligence with Eikon’s rich market data, news and analytics, to facilitate simple, timely and auditable compliance communication with the front office.
Financial firms globally are being hit by an overwhelming number of regulatory obligations; thousands of regulatory changes are published each year. The increased frequency of rule changes and the intensity of investigations by regulators mean that financial traders and compliance teams alike must know exactly when a change in regulation will impact their internal policies and procedures. Additionally, financial firms must also be able to manage and communicate those changes to front office staff and track how they are implemented.
A Thomson Reuters poll covering over 250 compliance managers and traders revealed that while the front office approach to compliance is generally constructive, there are still significant gaps in regulatory changes filtering through to and being translated by the trading floor. Of the traders polled, just under a third (31%) of respondents was aware of all the regulatory rules associated with their activity at any given time. Coupled with this, only 33% percent of traders reported receiving training related to compliance issues within the past three months. Additionally, only 56% of compliance managers questioned believed that traders have easy access to internal policy documents.
“If the financial crisis has taught us anything it’s that the culture of compliance needs to be embedded right at the trader’s workstation,” said David Craig, president, Financial & Risk, Thomson Reuters. “The effective flow of regulatory information to the trading floor helps protect firms from the risk of sanction and enforcement and helps demonstrate to the regulatory authorities that compliance is front of mind across the organisation. Enabling this through the core trading workstation and in the context of the financial market in an intelligent way, makes it easier, simpler, and reduces resistance to compliance.”
Thomson Reuters provides daily regulatory intelligence, from more than 230 regulators and exchanges around the world, which can be deployed within an organisation to manage the lifecycle of the compliance process from notification of a new regulation, through responding to regulatory audits. Thomson Reuters Eikon is a next-generation solution for consuming real-time data and executing financial markets transactions across asset classes such as foreign exchange, fixed income, commodities, equities and derivatives.
Thomson Reuters Eikon for Compliance Management addresses the problems faced by organisations in interpreting and communicating regulatory change and its impact across the front, middle and back office. Compliance managers are able to perform market and company data research as part of their surveillance or audit investigations, and can manage compliance manuals through a customisable workflow tool. The array of compliance policy workflow, eLearning and surveillance add-on applications mean that policy changes and compliance training can be distributed to front office staff and the confirmation of adoption of those changes can be tracked to maintain a complete audit trail for regulators. Additionally, traders can more efficiently keep abreast of regulatory change and the potential impact of regulation on their trading activities.
“In 2011, approximately 60 regulatory announcements per working day were made across financial services regulators globally and this figure will only keep rising,” said Mr. Craig. “With the severe enforcement action and penalties for non-compliance being focused more and more on senior individuals within firms, the need for firms to be compliant across their entire trade lifecycle has never been greater. Thomson Reuters Eikon for Compliance Management empowers firms with the knowledge and tools to stay ahead of regulatory change and more effectively communicate policy changes internally. This helps firms avoid the costly fines and reputational damage of not meeting their regulatory obligations.”
