Financial Services Industry
The Financial services sector represents one of the most regulated industries in the world. Increased competition, market shifts, and technological developments have spawned unprecedented changes in the global financial services industry. Financial services companies have come under a barrage of regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US, Canadian Bill 198, and Turnbull in the UK. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act. is only one in a long series of government rules that have a direct impact on the IT and governance decisions made in financial services companies.
Over the last several decades, companies managed their financial, quality, health & safety, environmental, and other compliance requirements through traditional hardcopy means or via a collection of disparate systems (point solutions). Even with the deployment of globalized ERP solutions, the specific compliance areas are still often managed in silos, divided along organizational or domain lines. In addition, the management of risk and corporate governance within organizations has often been managed separately from the traditional compliance areas.
Due to several market and regulatory factors, most companies will have to develop strategies and systems to accomplish more efficient compliance management throughout the enterprise in order to maintain profitability and market share while reducing risk. Technology innovation and a merging of governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) regulatory philosophies now allow companies to achieve business improvement through the integration of all their GRC requirements throughout the enterprise.
To enhance their competitive advantage in this changed environment, one of the strategies financial services companies are increasingly embracing is the use of new technologies, such as Amadeus software solutions, to streamline internal processes and deliver maximum value to their clients. At present, most companies manage their internal controls documentation and evaluations (audits, testing, design effectiveness evaluations) in an ad hoc, highly manual manner, using spreadsheets, documents, legacy software or a combination. Progressive companies realize that these methods are no longer acceptable in today’s highly competitive market.
Amadeus software solution, eQCM, addresses important compliance challenges. Chief financial officers are using eQCM to automate their processes in the governance, risk, compliance and quality zones. eQCM facilitates the implementation of disclosure and financial information operations while optimizing the activities related to them.
- Enables organizations to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and its two key sections 302 and 404, Canadian Bill 198, and other industry governance standards.
- Records, monitors and reports on essential governance, risk, and compliance activities processes and identifies compliance gaps and risk. Accurate information for the internal controls over financial reporting is communicated through the appropriate levels fostering the necessary transparency within the organization.
- Fosters collaboration and allows manager to visualize and monitor all internal controls compliance processes as a unified system by connecting departments and personnel with appropriate data and processes.
- Allows companies to easily update the organizational model within the system and the changes are propagated through your business processes, hence, giving the users the agility to change processes as the organization and regulations change.
- Provides advanced reporting and dashboards for all critical business processes and delivers timely information that you can act upon to ensure sustainable compliance and improve compliance business performance. Keeps management updated on all internal control procedures.
- Allows organizations to be and stay in control of their compliance processes with the Process-In-Control capabilities which allow managers to pinpoint problematic areas and implement and track solutions.
- Ensures process continuity through the integration with MS Outlook, delivering notifications, alerts, specified process information and access to the specific task within the e-mails.
- Provides efficient workflow management by allowing integrated process workflows. The manager can log issues and start corrective action workflows from within a testing activity (workflow). The workflow integration enables the flow of information to be seamless and delivers a more realistic process approach.
Amadeus automates financial services processes to improve efficiency. Here are a few processes:
- Internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR) documentation
- ICFR Testing and Validation
- ICFR Design evaluations and change management
- Corrective Actions and Issues Management
- ICFR Certification and Sign-off
- Centralized content management
- Compliance Intelligence
- Risk management
- Audit management
