The Adaptive Intelligent Document Processing product will enable financial institutions to automate the extraction of unstructured data for ingestion into their systems. The London-based company said this will let market participants automate a choke-point that is often solved through error-prone manual processes.

Duco’s AI can be trained on clients’ specific documents, learning how to interpret layout and text in order to replicate data gathering procedures with ever-greater accuracy. It will work within Duco’s SaaS-based, no-code platform.

The company won the award for Best Transaction Reporting Solution in A-Team Group’s RegTech Insight Awards Europe 2024 in May.

Managing unstructured data has become a key goal of capital markets participants as they take on new use cases, such as private market access and sustainability reporting. These domains are largely built on datasets that lack the order of reference, pricing and other data formats with which it must be amalgamated in their systems.

“Our integrated platform strategy will unlock significant value for our clients,” said Duco chief executive Michael Chin. “We’re solving a huge problem for the industry, one that clients have repeatedly told us lacks a robust and efficient solution on the market. They can now ingest, transform, normalise, enrich and reconcile structured and unstructured data in Duco, automating data processing throughout its lifecycle.”

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This year’s platinum award winner is Regnology for its Most Innovative Regulatory Reporting Solution. Gold award winners include Interop.io, Quod Financial, S&P Global Market Intelligence, and SmartStream Technologies, with plenty more entrants picking up silver awards.

The Innovation Awards 2024 included over 40 categories across A-Team Group’s Data Management Insight, TradingTech Insight, RegTech Insight and ESG Insight news channels. They ranged from Most Innovative Smart Trader Desktops and Workflows to Most Innovative Data Standards Initiative, Most Innovative ESG Data Solution, Most Innovative AI in Regulatory Compliance Initiative, Most Innovative Data-Driven Transformation Project, Most Innovative Financial Technology Executive, Most Innovative Professional Development Initiative, and more.

A complete list of winners and their solutions can be found in the Innovation Awards 2024 report.

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Kech has experience in finance, infrastructure, blockchain, and standardisation gained through a variety of leadership positions held over the past 25 years. In his role as GLEIF CEO, he will be pivotal in driving further adoption of the LEI and verifiable LEI (vLEI).

Dessa Glasser, chair of the GLEIF board of directors, says: “Alexandre Kech’s mission is clear, to enable GLEIF to realise its full potential and create sustainable value for the whole Global LEI System, including partners, employees, and LEI stakeholders everywhere.”

Paying tribute to GLEIF’s outgoing CEO, Stephan Wolf, she adds: “On behalf of the GLEIF board of directors, I would like to sincerely thank Stephan Wolf for his ten years of dedicated service as CEO. Under his leadership, GLEIF has established a global trust network that enables legal entities and their business partners to demonstrate ownership and relationships transparently. It has also made enormous strides while continuing to innovate fearlessly, particularly in the digital space with the introduction of the vLEI.”

Commenting on his upcoming role at GLEIF, Kech says: “The potential of the LEI to enhance private and public sector efficiencies, strengthen regulatory oversight, and expand economic inclusion increases exponentially with the integration of digital technologies. I look forward to enhancing both the reach and the impact of the LEI and vLEI.”

Prior to joining GLEIF, Kech was executive board member and business head of digital securities at SDX, a SIX company, where he was instrumental in driving growth and implementing strategic initiatives that enhanced business performance. He has specialised in finance at BNY Mellon, payments and securities infrastructure and standards at SWIFT, blockchain and digital assets at Onchain Custodian (ONC), and most recently, at Citi Ventures.

He is also involved in industry and standardisation initiatives as the convenor of ISO TC 68 / SC8 / WG3, which produced the ISO 24165 Digital Token Identifier (DTI) and is a member of the DTI Foundation Product Advisory Committee. He also recently served as co-chair of the Global Digital Finance (GDF) custody working group.

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CBA’s approval as a Validation Agent comes ahead of a regulation update by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) on OTC derivative transaction reporting that will come into force in October 2024 and mandate the LEI as the only permitted entity identifier for counterparty identification. This will phase out use of the dated Avox International Business Entity Identifier (AVID) and the more commonly used Business Identifier Code (BIC) and drive up adoption of the LEI. The aim of the change is to increase alignment with global market practices to reduce costs and complexity, while addressing the challenge of identifying smaller, non-financial counterparties.

There are now 15 Validation Agents globally spanning Africa, Australia, China, Europe, India, the Middle East, and North America. The Validation Agent Framework enables financial institutions and other supervised organisations involved in legal entity identity verification and validation to obtain and maintain LEIs for their clients in cooperation with accredited LEI Issuers.

“The continued expansion of the Validation Agent network demonstrates the value derived by both agent organisations and their clients in helping to deliver trust with increased simplicity, convenience, and expediency,” says Stephan Wolf, CEO of the Global LEI Foundation (GLEIF). “GLEIF endorses and welcomes CBA’s commitment to proactively support its clients in getting ahead of the LEI adoption curve.”

CBA is also championing broader industry efforts to harmonise the use of identifiers to promote greater transparency and contribute to the fight against financial crime across the global economy. Market traction stems from the support of key stakeholders advocating the inclusion of the LEI within ISO 20022 payment messages. These include the Bank for International Settlements’ Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures’ (CPMI) and its Harmonized ISO 20022 data requirements for enhancing cross-border payments, and the Wolfsberg Group’s updated Payment Transparency Standards.

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“With the emergence of AI-based attacks, the identity verification game has changed,” says Todd Wilkinson, president and CEO at Entrust. “Deepfakes and synthetic identity are driving a global need for a powerful level of identity assurance that facilitates digital journeys. Authentication using biometric-based, AI-driven identity verification will be critical to ensuring security, privacy, and trust in high-value digital-first interactions. Onfido IDV solutions have proven their value in Europe’s high-compliance environment.”

Founded in 2012, Onfido makes it relatively easy for people to access services through digital verification. The company has more than 500 employees and over 1,200 customers globally including leading financial institutions.

Any agreement on the acquisition remains subject to regulatory approval and other steps required in accordance with applicable laws.

The post Entrust in Talks to Acquire AI-Powered Identity Verification Specialist Onfido appeared first on A-Team.

Palo Alto, California based Quantifind provides a risk intelligence solution that uses Generative AI to automate much of the text-to-tables process in structuring information relevant to the securities sanctions screening process. The platform streamlines the sanctions screening component to provide an automated risk management process, providing real-time insights into securities, customers, partners and suppliers through entity resolution, emerging threat detection, watchlist screening, alerts triage, KYC, relationship extraction and automated investigations.

“Bringing together government sanctions and adverse media coverage data with the breadth of entity reference data and reporting capabilities available in Entity Insights allows continuous monitoring of developments that could impact a user’s vendors and other third parties,” says Peter Pernebo, global head of entity due diligence at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “The addition of this critical data enables more robust entity due diligence and operational risk management.”

Ari Tuchman, CEO at Quantifind, adds: “In an increasingly dynamic global sanctions environment, screening precision and speed are vital. We are collaborating with S&P Global Market Intelligence to provide real-time insights on sanctions and adverse media screening to enable users to effectively monitor and assess risk.”

Entity Insights is available within existing S&P Global Market Intelligence solutions including Onboarding Accelerator, Know Your Third Party (KY3P) and Know Your Customer (KYC). Sanctions and adverse media screening data are available via the S&P Global Market Intelligence Entity Insights platform as well as via API.

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Looking at data protection, penalties for 2023 violations of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) surpassed the total for 2021, 2020, and 2019. The EU levied fines totalling almost €2.1 billion for non-compliance with GDPR.

The regulatory landscape for crypto and digital assets witnessed an unparalleled surge in enforcement actions. The world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, faced a staggering $4 billion fine from the US Government’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for the violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. The fine was the biggest of the year.

Geographically, the Corlytics report notes the number of fines in the Americas was 14 times higher than in APAC and four times higher than in Europe. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) had a relatively quiet year on the fines front charging just £52.8 million ($66.7 million).

After a quiet first two quarters, global regulators fined over 80% of the total amount from July to December 2023. US regulators occupied the leading positions in all the fines categories. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) were among the most active regulators, issuing enforcement fines of $3.4 billion and $1.4 billion respectively.

Corlytics’ quarterly and annual forensic analysis of regulatory data is provided by the company’s team of experts to help financial services firms track regulatory activity across the globe.

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CoorpID allows global banks to automate outreach and gather private KYC data directly from corporate banking customers. A repository allows the corporate to manage all its banking relationships. For large multinationals, the platform makes it easy to store and structure KYC company documents and enables sharing with banks and business partners.

The CoorpID solution enables Encompass to build a complete KYC profile, combining authoritative public information with private information directly from customers. This offers financial institutions a full Corporate Digital Identity (CDI) providing a unified source of truth and visibility into risk.

Blacksmith KYC allows banks to configure Customer Due Diligence (CDD) requirements within a digital policy manager. This ensures relevant data and evidence are gathered and streamlines the collection process. Connecting this capability will enhance Encompass’ offering, making it easier for banks to turn manual KYC policies into automated processes and providing analysts with risk insights from the customer profiles and the ability to better monitor Financial Economic Crime (FEC) risk exposure.

Wayne Johnson, co-founder and CEO at Encompass, comments: “CDI is the future of our industry, solving critical problems for the banks we serve. These acquisitions represent a huge step forward in bringing our vision, which will transform KYC, to life.”

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By Oliver Blower, CEO of VoxSmart.

While many of us will be making tough lifestyle changes this January, from adopting strict fitness regimes to cutting down on calories, there are other changes afoot in the realm of WhatsApp that could impact many of us over the coming days. For regulatory compliance teams at financial institutions worldwide, these could spell an unhappy start to the new year if precautions are not taken.

Google and WhatsApp recently announced that from early 2024, chat and media backups on Android will count towards users’ Google account cloud storage limit – a reversal in policy from 2018, when backups stopped taking up Google Drive storage. This will have several concerning implications for financial institutions desperately seeking to ensure they adhere to employee communications monitoring regulations and avoid hefty WhatsApp-related penalties.

Essentially, the update means that when a user reaches their storage limit, they will be forced to free up space in their Google Drive or risk messages failing to back up. According to WhatsApp, ‘If the amount of available storage on your device reaches critically low levels, WhatsApp might not function properly. If this happens, WhatsApp might prompt you to free up space in order to continue using the app.’

The thought of employees being prompted to free up space will worry many institutions – particularly those in the banking and finance sectors, where staff use of instant messaging applications like WhatsApp has become the norm in recent years. Given these institutions are required by law to collect and monitor certain employee conversations if requested by a watchdog, there are a couple of obvious risks related to this new update.

Firstly, there is the possibility of a staff member actively deleting old WhatsApp conversations to free up space on their device – conversations that may have been important to regulatory investigations. With Google reportedly having recommended that users delete items from WhatsApp itself to reduce the storage used by the next backup, this is certainly a very real possibility. The other risk is that the application itself experiences a technical malfunction due to having reached full storage capacity and messages are corrupted or not properly backed up.

Either way, the update means financial institutions with a large number of Android WhatsApp users may be at greater risk of failing to adequately capture staff communications moving forward. This comes at a time when markets regulators including the likes of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have been cracking down hard on firms for failing to adequately capture and monitor employee messages on channels like WhatsApp and Signal.

In August, the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced a combined $549m in penalties against Wells Fargo and a host of other firms over their failure to maintain electronic records of employee communications, having already swept through the largest banks on Wall Street in late 2022 to impose over $2bn in record-keeping related fines. Meanwhile, the Financial Conduct Authority has also launched an inquiry into banks’ use of WhatsApp on personal devices for trading.

Against this backdrop, it is imperative that compliance departments ensure their firm is well equipped to collate all employee messages sent or received over WhatsApp, paying close attention to how their existing processes could be impacted by the new update. Ideally, companies will implement a robust system that harnesses automation to continually capture and record employee communication on platforms like WhatsApp. With such a process, staff can freely delete messages to free up storage space on their own devices without risking company nonalignment with regulations.

As the new year commences, new measures will need to be taken by many banks to ensure they remain safeguarded against compliance regulations – particularly as watchdogs continue to crack the whip on financial firms across the globe.

The post WhatsApp Update Could Spell Unhappy New Year for Compliance Teams appeared first on A-Team.

The awards were presented by Andrew Delaney, President & Chief Content Officer at A-Team Group, during a lively drinks reception after the close of A-Team Group’s 16 November 2023 RegTech Summit in New York City.

This year, the awards included 28 categories ranging from Best Sanctions and PEPs Solution to

Best Post-Trade Solution, Best Know Your Customer Solution, Best Solution for Records Retention, Best Solution for Sell-Side Regulatory Compliance, Best Solution for Buy-Side Regulatory Compliance, Best e-Comms Surveillance Solution, Best Regulatory Intelligence Solution and more.

An editor’s recognition award for RegTech Industry Professional of the Year was presented to Mary Kopczynski, CEO at RegAlytics, and Co-Founder of Women in RegTech New York.

Delaney said: “Congratulations to the award winners and thank you to all the vendors that entered A-Team Group’s RegTech Insight Awards – USA 2023, to our RegTech Insight community that voted for its preferred solutions, and to our independent, expert advisory board that worked in collaboration with our editorial team to select this year’s winners.”

A complete list of winners and their solutions can be found in the RegTech Insight Awards USA Awards 2023 report.

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