Getting to the Point. Reg-Track Zooms In on the Regulatory Essentials
Jinfo Blog

By Chris Porter

Abstract

Chris Porter looks at how the Reg-Track regulatory monitoring solution, from specialised US-headquartered regulatory monitoring and advisory company Reg-Room LLC, can add value for hard-pressed compliance staff in financial services companies.

Item

The feeling of having ever more work to do, and never quite enough resources to do it, is an extremely common one in the corporate world.

Battling Increasing Regulation

Compliance professionals in the financial services sector may well feel themselves particularly afflicted. On the one hand, since the financial crisis, there are more and more regulations to worry about, and they are being increasingly aggressively enforced. On the other hand, financial institutions find themselves facing significant cost pressures and are not falling over themselves to increase staff and spending.

While compliance may be one of the few areas where some budget growth can be found, those in the job role still find themselves bearing a growing workload and facing major time and cost pressures as they strive to get the job done to a standard which will keep their board happy and their company's reputation safe.

Make the Most of the Tools

Some nimble vendors have been quick to see this as an opportunity, and have brought innovative new products to market to help ease the burden. One such is US-headquartered Reg-Room, a company which specialises in regulatory monitoring for the financial services world.

Reg-Room was founded in 2009 by Nick Paraskeva, a former senior vice-president of global regulatory risk at Citigroup who has over 25 years of experience in compliance and regulation.

Complex Information - Distilled

One of Reg-Room's key offerings is Reg-Track, a service which provides succinct bulletpoint summaries of regulatory developments around the world, with daily updates and links to primary source documents.

The particular skill of Reg-Track is the ability to take highly complex, lengthy subject-matter and distill from it the absolutely key essentials which a compliance professional needs to know.

Increasing Efficiency

In one example, Reg-Track takes a 264-paragraph court ruling about the legal obligations of an accountancy firm in Hong Kong to disclose internal working documents to the regulator, plus an announcement about an appeal against the ruling, and captures the main points of the situation in just a few bullet points, so that the key information can be absorbed by the reader within seconds.

"People may struggle to absorb or even read information if they perceive documents to be too long and complicated," Reg-Track's Nick Paraskeva told FreePint. "We are making the process more efficient and making sure you don't miss information".

Editor's Note

Reg-Track has a host of interesting features. The full FreePint Report: Product Review of Reg-Track is now available in PDF format, in a convenient package for reference and sharing, for those with a FreePint Subscription.

This article is part of the FreePint Topic Series: What You Need to Know Your Customer (KYC) running from July-September 2014 which includes articles, reviews and expert tips. Register your interest now, and you'll also get a free PDF report with selected premium articles when it's published in September.

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