Compliance checking – have you got your head in the cloud?

Ed Evans

Before I start talking about compliance checking, let me clarify what cloud computing is. In the most simple terms, cloud computing is computing based on the internet. Traditionally people run applications on their computer or server at home or in the office. Cloud computing allows people to access the same type of applications via an internet browser.

There are many excellent reasons why companies should make the move to the cloud including:

• Increased flexibility
• Collaborative working
• Better security
• Reduced capital expenditure
• Work from anywhere

 

At Genovo, we’ve found that cloud applications such as Google Docs and Salesforce really help us work in a more efficient and collaborative manner, especially when we are working on the content for marketing material such as this. In fact two of us worked on the content of this article in a single online document. I was writing this sentence whilst Ed corrected my grammar in the first paragraph at the same time!

In my years working in financial services industry and speaking to hundreds of financial advisers/advisory companies, I’ve noticed that there is a fairly common theme surrounding compliance checking of suitability reports. Quite simply, it seems that it can be a fairly inefficient and time consuming process. In fact the time involved from writing the report to the time the the client actually receives the end result can be quite extensive and leave both adviser and client frustrated!

Question: Would it be useful if the compliance checker and adviser could work on the same suitability report at the same time as if they were sat next to each other in the same room? Please let me know your thoughts by adding a comment below.

It’s all possible with a number of cloud based file sharing and/or word processing applications.

As an example, an adviser could write a suitability report using Genovo, upload the word document to Google Drive and share it securely with the compliance officer. Compliance office and adviser could then work on that document at the same time and “chat” from within the document, making any necessary changes at that time.

Over the coming weeks I’m going to be posting a number of articles on handy tech tips, so if you want to rise above the clouds and stay ahead of the game – subscribe and get email updates whenever we update our blog.

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