Service: Finance

Compliance Management Solution for ITC

In this video we delve into the transformative journey of our esteemed client, ITC (Independent Trustee Company), through the eyes of Eamonn King, their dedicated Head of IT. With over 7 years of collaboration, ITC has experienced remarkable success by migrating to the cloud and integrating Microsoft solutions, thanks to our expert guidance and support.

The Challenge

ITC’s legacy compliance management system relied on manual processes, including paper-based record-keeping and manual audits. This involved manually tracking compliance requirements, manually maintaining records, and conducting manual audits to ensure compliance with regulations. The system was prone to errors and inconsistencies and required a significant amount of maintenance and upgrades, leading to higher costs over time. Moreover, their existing system was not able to handle large amounts of data or support a growing number of users, making it difficult to scale compliance management efforts. It did not integrate well with other systems, making it difficult to share data and collaborate with other teams. Another drawback was the lack of automation capabilities, making it difficult to track and manage compliance activities, leading to the risk of errors and missed deadlines and hence additional management overhead to avoid this. It also lacked the ability to generate detailed reports, making it difficult to track compliance progress and identify areas for improvement.

The Solution

ITC approached TEKenable with the need for a solution that can help them manage and maintain compliance with various regulations and industry standards. They needed a solution which could ensure data security and privacy, meet audit and reporting requirements, and maintain compliance with laws and regulations such as GDPR. They were facing challenges in managing compliance, such as manual processes, lack of visibility into compliance status, or difficulty in keeping up with changing regulations. They needed a solution which helped them easily track and document compliance efforts and demonstrate compliance to auditors and regulators.

Compliance Management Solution

TEKenable provided ITC with a compliance management tool which plugs into the Dynamics 365 Customer Service baseline solution and serves as a process workflow, documentation and repository for the execution and tracking of compliance management. This tool provides real-time monitoring and reporting capabilities that keep ITC informed of any potential compliance issues. Moreover, it provides automated workflow and documentation management, making it easy to stay on top of compliance tasks and ensure that all necessary documentation is readily available.

Key Features

  • Automated monitoring and reporting: This solution provided ITC with the ability to automatically monitor compliance with regulatory requirements and generate reports to document compliance status.
  • Risk assessment and management: The solution includes tools for identifying and assessing compliance risks, as well as for managing and mitigating those risks.
  • Policy management: The solution provides a centralized location for storing and managing organizational policies and procedures data related to compliance.
  • Auditing and investigation: The solution has the capability to conduct audits and investigations to identify compliance violations and determine corrective actions.
  • Workflow and collaboration: The solution facilitates collaboration and workflow management among compliance teams and other stakeholders.
  • Data security: The solution includes robust data security features to protect sensitive compliance-related information.
  • Integrations: The solution is able to integrate with other systems and platforms, such as ERP, CRM, and HR systems, to ensure comprehensive compliance management.
  • Scalability: The solution is scalable and is able to accommodate the changing compliance requirements of ITC as it grows.

Moreover, this Compliance Management Solution manages the capture and tracking of:

  • Complaints
  • Potential Conflicts of Interest
  • GDPR Subject Access Requests
  • GDPR Data Breach
  • Errors made while processing financial transactions
  • Legal Proceedings
  • Higher Risk Product Transactions (additional diligence required)
  • Gifts and Hospitality
  • Fitness and Probity

The Outcome

The new solution helped ITC automate the compliance process, reducing the time and effort required to ensure compliance with various regulations. By automating compliance processes and providing real-time monitoring, this solution helped ITC identify and mitigate risks that could lead to non-compliance. The solution provides a centralised platform for compliance-related communication between different departments, making it easier for employees to stay informed about compliance requirements. Moreover, it provides ITC with detailed reporting on compliance status, allowing ITC to identify areas that need improvement and track progress over time.

Zurich – Blended Funds Trading Platform

Zurich is one Ireland’s leading insurance companies providing a wide range of general insurance and life insurance products and services. The company employs over 1,000 people across its locations in Dublin and Wexford. Zurich in Ireland is part of Zurich Insurance Group, a leading multi-line insurer that serves its customers in global and local markets. With more than 55,000 employees, the Group’s customers include individuals, small businesses, and mid-sized and large companies, including multinational corporations, in more than 170 countries. The Group is headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, where it was founded in 1872 and has a global network of subsidiaries and offices in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and other markets. 

THE CHALLENGE

Zurich Life and Investments provide an end to end solution for fund administration needs for companies who administer collective unitised and blended funds. The core element of Zurich’s service was run primarily on LIfe400 (on AS400), spreadsheets, and dispersed databases. This was not scalable and carried undue risk and required excessive manual administration and oversight as a result. Zurich had a business opportunity to trade funds on a wholesale scale much larger than their existing processing activities but could not seize the opportunity without a major revamp of their supporting IT systems. Furthermore, the Life400 did not have the necessary capabilities to trade the blended funds, and it would be very difficult and expensive to add that capability.

THE SOLUTION

TEKenable engaged in a detailed analysis of the existing and proposed process, devised an approach to allow the inclusion of the older technologies in Zurich without requiring them to be modified and completed a detailed functional specification with the Zurich business team which would form the basis of the new system. 

On completion of the analysis, TEKenable delivered a bespoke solution in .NET – designed, built and optimized for Trading and Pricing needs of Zurich users. The system entailed – 

  • Process flow for the management of the daily trading notifications and instructions and straight to market trades
  • Ability to load trade notifications from Back end systems e.g. Life 400 on a daily basis 
  • Settlement processing
  • Contract note receipt
  • Fund charges and pricing
  • Update of the HiPortfolio Asset management system with unit creations and liquidations
  • Manage the “de-blending” and aggregation of these notifications down to the Base Fund trade instruction level 
  • Issues Trade instructions 
  • Glide path based rebalancing of funds
  • Anti-dilution levy handling
  • Blend of Blend processing and other fund types

THE OUTCOME

The new platform known, as TPT, is now an important element of Zurich’s business and IT infrastructure, allowing the company trade wholesale volumes of Blended Fund investments reliably without increased headcount. Long-term support for TPT is provided under contract between Zurich and TEKenable. The implementation of this new platform reduced IT costs, increased visibility and improved quality of service for the Zurich’s end customers and most importantly, allowed Zurich to launch a new business service, not just despite the impediment of legacy systems, but actually incorporating them into the process.

The project was so successful that Zurich Isle of Man engaged TEKenable to implement a trading platform for them supporting box position trading, multi-currency hedging and integrations with SAP. Millions of euro are being traded on a daily and weekly basis through these applications. 

Independent Trustee Company – Microsoft Dynamics 365 Platform

Independent Trustee Company (ITC) is one of Ireland’s leading providers of self-administered pensions with over €1.2 billion of client funds in 4,000 pension structures.  Established in 1992 and employing almost sixty staff, ITC also acts as a trustee of self-administered schemes, private trusts and larger occupational schemes. Moreover, ITC is among one of the founding members of the Association of Pensioneer Trustees in Ireland.

THE CHALLENGE

ITC realized that its existing legacy system was incompatible with new business needs. A huge number of spread sheet macros had grown up across the organisation, making the work look chaotic, untidy and all over the place. Many of organization’s processes were still quite manual and crying out to be automated. A new platform was needed to make business processes more efficient and effective, without increasing headcount.

A thorough analysis and mapping of business processes, which needed transformation, was done, resulting in a list of more than forty processes, ranging from complex scenarios like adding new customers, which required digital signatures and AML compliance, through to simpler processes like ‘transfer of funds’, where customers wished to allocate money between investments, which needed to be revamped.

THE SOLUTION

ITC turned to us (TEKenable), its long-time technology services provider, with years of experience in providing companies with innovative, modern IT systems to integrate with their existing legacy systems. Having worked with ITC for more than a decade, we were intimately aware of the company’s existing IT infrastructure.

We earlier worked with ITC to eliminate paper-based processes and built iTrust – a platform holding details of all client investment information. This project was a huge success, reducing costs significantly, making business more efficient and positioning ITC to thrive despite the severe recession that hit in 2008.

“ITC is a very successful company and has built a very strong position in the market for self-administered pensions. The challenge now is to grow revenues by winning new business and to do this without a big increase in headcount. Deploying Phase 1 of our new platform will allow us to manage new customers acquisition more efficiently and to better serve our customers, once we on-board them.
We’re happy we selected Dynamics and we look forward to working closely with TEKenable to deliver Phase 2.”

Eamonn King – Head of IT dept. at ITC

After long discussions within the client ITC, it was decided that the solution will be implemented in an array of phases, with Phase 1 of ‘quick wins’ and high impact improvements and a Phase 2 to further extended automation across the business.

Phase 1 is complete and operational where TEKenable provided ITC with a platform – Microsoft Dynamics 365 – which best met their vision for proficient business operations. Dynamics 365 was successfully implemented and integrated well into the existing Office 365 environment. ITC already had access to SharePoint under its E3 license, so it made sense to integrate Dynamics with SharePoint for document storage and management.

THE OUTCOME

The solution has enabled ITC to manage all the activities involved in onboarding a new client – entirely through Dynamics 365. It is also integrated with iTrust, the bespoke ITC system holding customer account and investment information.

Moreover, the solution eliminated a wide range of manual processes and enable ITC to use one centralized system for clientele management. It also enabled ITC to save human capital costs, enhanced their business activity, and lowered the cost of maintaining exhausted and weary old systems in place.

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