Banks today have to contend with increasingly stringent regulations in various stages of development and implementation.
Furthermore, new regulations impact fi nancial institutions at a global, regional and national level and continue to be issued at a rapid rate. Regulators want to shape a stronger financial and economic reality but this brings about a counter situation in which operational costs rise as a direct consequence of changes in the regulatory landscape.
The financial climate of this new era of banking is unarguably complex and unforgiving, and stricter regulations regarding data quality, more frequent reporting and greater aggregation of risk data, IT and operations are proving to be unwieldy to most financial institutions.
A new set of regulations are theoretically now in force for FATCA. While questions about the final regulations remain, the first important deadline for implementing system and process changes has arrived. From January 2014, FFIs who have entered into an agreement with the IRS must have adopted their procedures for opening new accounts to ensure capture of U.S. indicia. Soon screening of pre-existing relationships will also begin. Designed as a tool to counteract tax evasion, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act requires additional reporting requirements for all US citizens overseas. It also means substantial compliance obligations for all non-US financial institutions worldwide. Bankers say all banks in the UAE will be forced to comply as they must rely on US correspondent banks to clear dollar denominated transactions. Non compliance could invite sanctions that could include withdrawal of US dollar clearing rights with correspondent banks.
Act now, and choose proven technology to support your regulatory reporting. Synergy Software Systems a proven local specialist for more than 20 years in the implementation and support of financial and reporting solutions ensures an effective and cost-efficient path to compliance. BRSAnalytics is purpose built to address regulatory requirements with an automated pre-built data warehouse and reporting framework.
Below are listed some of its core features. Tomorrow I will highlight the benefits these bring.
Ad-hoc data drill-downs and drill-ups reporting
Following the submission of reports to the regulator, it is common to receive queries from the regulator on specific figures. The solution provides the facility to address this requirement by allowing easy-to-use data-drilling and ad hoc analytics.
Support and audit of full reporting cycle
The solution provides a single environment from which the business user can manage the full reporting cycle; from data loading, to data checking and validations, from data querying, to report generation and report submission. Moreover, the solution keeps track of and also audits all historic activities.
Customisable engine and reporting
The core engine of the solution allows business users to customise and add business rules to the underlying calculations without any programming interventions. Furthermore, the reporting layer allows changes or additions to the reports, both in terms of content as well as layout. System authorised personnel, such as power users, may also assign the rights to modify reference data mappings. This increases flexibility and prevents changes being either overlooked or forgotten.
Standard data interface layer
The solution provides a standard data interface that clearly defines the data fields and file formats required by the solution to produce the regulatory reports. This facilitates the implementation of the solution by keeping an abstracted layer from any back-end source systems.
Supports XBRL submission format
Over 30 regulators across the world have mandated XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) as the required electronic reporting format. The primary driver for XBRL adoption is the provision of a systematic reporting framework in which institutions domiciled in different countries may easily be compared. BRSANALYTICS has been developed so that it can be easily extended to support this format (with COREP and FINREP reports bearing over 35,000 data points. Source: EBA), thus satisfying the reporting requirements of such jurisdictions.
Consolidated group reporting
Consolidated reporting requirements of bank subsidiaries vary depending on the country in which they operate. Group reporting of multi-regional banks to head offices is made possible through BRSANALYTICS. The solution provides different reporting views of data as a result of the multiple Chart of Accounts hierarchies that can be structured within the application. This provides easy reporting configurations, be it for internal, subsidiary and/or the group.
