With an eye on the SEC’s new Market Rule, GRC fintech ACA Group has added a series of features addressing the verity of regulated firms’ marketing materials in a new release to its ComplianceAlpha compliance platform. This is augmented in the release by a new eLearning Solution aimed at helping firms train staff in compliance-related matters.
According to ACA partner Patrick Conroy, who focuses on technology and managed services for the company, the latest release introduces capabilities to help clients with marketing-related document management and employee e-training. Conroy says the idea is to offer a smarter toolset for checking advertising and other market materials against appropriate disclosures as firms start to respond to emerging SEC regulations.
An enhanced marketing review solution that leverages natural language processing (NLP) for managing compliance activities for legal documents (side letters and NDAs) and reviews of marketing materials/financial promotions. The new capability allows firms to check documents in multiple formats, including video, and detect and raise exceptions as necessary. By extension, this approach – using open data APIs and NPL – supports enhancements to the platform’s Marketing Review capabilities, helpings firms automate and more efficiently manage the end-to-end review and approval workflow for marketing materials and financial promotions.
The new eLearning Solution, meanwhile, helps firms to centralize employee training requirements to enhance employee compliance. ACA reckons the need to digitize compliance programs has become more urgent due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Citing the recent Thomson Reuters’ Fintech, RegTech and the Role of Compliance Report 2021, it notes that of the 400 compliance and risk practitioners surveyed, 70% said the pandemic has increased their reliance on technology. ACA also notes a late 2020 Risk Alert from the SEC’s Division of Enforcement (formerly OCIE) that identified technology gaps as an area of deficiency in investment adviser compliance programs.
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