Jinfo: BvD Compliance Catalyst - Getting to Grips with Compliance Workflow

BvD Compliance Catalyst - Getting to Grips with Compliance Workflow
Jinfo Blog

29th August 2013

Abstract

Bureau van Dijk (BvD) is well-known to many readers of FreePint as a supplier of highly structured databases of company and executive information. Now, BvD has launched Compliance Catalyst, a workflow application designed to streamline the process of taking an informed, risk-based decision on whether to accept a potential new customer, supplier or other business partner. It also addresses ongoing monitoring and audit trail requirements, with a key focus on using the researcher's time to best effect.

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Many organisations are grappling with the burden of complying with “due diligence” requirements relating to their customers, suppliers or other business partners.

Due diligence is about making informed decisions on the potential risks of doing business with particular companies or individuals. It is also about ongoing monitoring, as risk levels do not remain constant; and it is about producing an audit trail to prove that you have the right processes and procedures in place and are taking appropriate risk-based decisions.

This compliance need, once largely confined to financial institutions and professional services firms, is manifesting itself in more and more kinds of corporations, especially as anti-corruption legislation begins to bite.

Bureau van Dijk (BvD) is well-known to many readers of FreePint as a supplier of highly structured databases of company and executive information.

According to BvD, its services have been used by compliance operatives for many years for research into company ownership structures. Users have typically been turning to its flagship Orbis database, or its Mint Global version (see FreePint review here), to perform some of the steps needed when investigating the potential risk of a business relationship.

Now, BvD has launched Compliance Catalyst, a workflow application specifically designed to help organisations to take an informed, risk-based decision on whether to accept a potential new customer, supplier or other business partner.

Compliance Catalyst draws on relevant data from BvD, integrates profiles of Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), sanctions data and other negative information from Miami-based specialist information provider WorldCompliance, adds sources of potentially negative news from leading news publishers and wraps the content around with highly specific workflow.

The solution aims to speed up decisions about client onboarding, put a solid structure in place for ongoing monitoring and produce a clear audit trail of the process, with a minimum of fiddly manual editorial work, allowing the researcher to use their time to best effect.

The product is highly configurable to match the client’s research needs and risk appetite. In FreePint’s view, the user interface is generally clean, uncluttered and easy to read – a major achievement considering the complexity of the functionality. And the content-rich outputs are crisp, clear and highly structured.

BvD has clearly put a lot of thought and effort into the service. While no doubt Compliance Catalyst will continue to evolve, it is a highly impressive first step into compliance-specific products and a natural extension of the product range for BvD.

Full Review

The full FreePint Report: Product Review of BvD Compliance Catalyst is now available to those with a FreePint Subscription.

Chapters in the full review:

Editor's Note: Compliance in Context

This article is part of the FreePint Topic Series: Compliance in Context, which runs from September to October 2013. Register your interest, and you'll get pre-notification of when registration opens for any webinars in this series, as well as a free copy of the FreePint Report: Buyer's Guide on Regulatory Compliance when we publish in October.

Platinum Sponsors:

Platinum Sponsor - Bureau van Dijk