National Regulatory Services last Tuesday announced availability of its new Policy Architect module, which is a component of the firm's ComplianceGuardian suite and is fully integrated with its other existing components.
Last July, more than 1,000 financial advisers responded to the second annual InvestmentNews survey on technology usage and satisfaction. Among respondents, 68.1% said that they used no compliance software at all.
Policy Architect is meant to help registered investment advisers and those affiliated with a broker-dealer stay compliant by allowing for more-frequent updating of a firm's compliance manuals.
“Many firms just don't have the resources available to constantly revise and update manuals with the regularity needed to stay current with compliance guidelines, and that is where Policy Architect comes in,” NRS managing director John Gebauer said.
About 2,000 firms are using the ComplianceGuardian suite, he said.
The real meat here isn't just that the new module helps users update internal firm guidelines but in how those guidelines can be uploaded into ComplianceGuardian where they will be meshed with continuing regulatory changes being tracked by NRS, including its quarterly updates.
CUSTOMIZABLE
Part of the genesis of Policy Architect was a desire by firms that wanted to add additional, customized content, Mr. Gebauer said.
“What we have created is really a full-fledged content management system that is built on proprietary technology,” he said.
Over the years, too many firms have relied on simply updating internally created or worse, consultant-created Microsoft Word files, Mr. Gebauer said.
“[Policy Architect] strips the technology from the content we provide so that firms can create any manual they want and manage it the same way, and if it is about a specific regulatory topic, they can then, in turn, connect it with [our] updates to that topic, as well,” he said.
The module also acts as a means for distributing updates to employees, obtaining attestations and maintaining a record-keeping audit trail, including a date and time stamp to each new version of a manual. And the module has a customizable e-mail tool that allows firms to notify users of manual changes and attestation requirements.
Those administering the system can control permission settings to ensure that specific individuals or groups have access to appropriate, applicable content, as well.
“The Policy Architect module adds a whole other layer of flexibility for larger firms or those that specialize in particular areas requiring that their manuals and documentation have additional customization,” Mr. Gebauer said.
The way the system is designed allows those managing manuals to make connections to NRS' regulatory index, where they find links to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. or Securities and Exchange Commission documentation and embed them right into a document.
Similarly, there are mail merge features that allow the insertion of particular titles or names of responsible parties at a firm without having to enter them manually dozens or hundreds of times throughout a document.
Some of these features are a result of ComplianceGuardian being built on top of the Microsoft.Net framework, which allows for easy addition of such features. The suite runs off of a SQL Server database on the back end.
$3,000 ON AVERAGE
An annual license for the Compliance Guardian platform starts at about $1,500 for a firm with up to 50 users. The price goes up as a firm adds modules or needs additional users beyond 50.
“The most common collection of modules is approximately a $3,000 annual fee,” Mr. Gebauer said.
Specific separate pricing for Policy Architect hasn't yet been announced.
Compliance software in the advisory and broker-dealer sectors often doesn't get the love it deserves, but no matter how you slice it, firms are likely to be buying more of it in the next year or two, thanks to what is going on in Washington.
