The Canadian Financial Services industry contains numerous and complex regulatory guidelines. These guidelines are forcing Financial Service organizations and Independent Advisors to reassess how they secure client information privacy; ensure their audit controls meet compliance standards and to be prepared in the event of a disaster. Today’s Canadian Financial Service companies and their advisors still work in a paper intensive industry with increasing numbers of application forms, KYC’s, trade blotters, correspondence etc.
Below are some of the challenges paper presents for Securities Companies, Mutual Fund Dealers and their advisors:
- Labor intensive Audit Testing for Regulators and compliance checks by Regional and Branch Managers
- Lack of disaster recovery preparedness in the event of a fire, flood or pandemic
- Anyone can access all client information if they have the key to the office or onsite storage
- High courier, printing, photocopy and storage costs
- Risk of losing or misplacing client and trading documents (Errors & Omissions)
- Audit Controls must meet the standards of regulatory bodies like the MFDA (Section 5.2) and the IDA
- Inability to quickly access archived client files
Success depends on optimizing and streamlining Key Processes between Financial Service companies and their advisors. A successful formula needs to maximize business performance, efficiency and compliance across the organization without business interruption while containing costs.
Synergize Workflow and Document Management provides the solution and is a foundation for good corporate governance.
Synergize Workflow automates human tasks, allowing professionals from across the organization to meet deadlines, alert and escalate actions for approval or audit testing while being integrated to a back office, advisor CRM’s and a host of legacy systems. Moving and exchanging data as needed by systems and users drives operational excellence. Imagine having access in real time, a view of the processes in your organization, giving you the exact Key Performance Indicators and alerting you to process flow issues.
Using Synergize Workflow in your organization along with detailed planning and execution can provide the following benefits:
- Reduced Administration Costs for Advisors - cut costs associated with paper filing, collating and retrieval; photocopying; onsite storage and courier which erode bottom line profits
- Compliance and Audit - regulatory bodies like the MFDA (Section 5.2) and the IDA have set out strict guidelines for Mutual Fund Dealers and IDA firms on how client information should be managed; policies matching procedures and disaster recovery rules while properly maintaining strong audit processes. With Synergize, you will have complete Audit Trails which account for the complete history of all client record activities and transactions
- Increased Customer Service Levels - by being able to quickly respond to all client inquiries
- Streamlined Business Processes - diverse applications allows for exchange of information accurately and in real-time
- Maximized existing investment - through integration of legacy applications into the new service model.
- Secure Client Privacy - maintaining proper handling of client information, ensuring that all trading activities are accounted for by Fund Dealers and Securities companies.
- Faster Account Opening - enables advisors to open new accounts seamlessly, append an electronic signature and forward client info for compliance review electronically.
For more information about Microdea's Synergize solutions for Financial Service companies contact us at 905.881.6071 ext 244 or marketing@microdea.com