Regulatory reporting specialist AxiomSL has significantly expanded its Global Shareholding Disclosures Solution with the launch this week of its Sensitive Industries module covering over 600 rules across more than 80 countries. Developed in consultation with clients and partners, the new module attempts to address two key challenges that investment management organizations face in monitoring sensitive industries compliance: the breadth of rules coverage, and industry classification.
Sensitive industries regulation covers investment ownership in areas like media, defence, aviation, and energy deemed critical to a jurisdiction’s sovereignty. Unrelenting changes across the asset management landscape from industry consolidation to COVID-19 market disruptions have contributed to the growing prevalence of sensitive industries monitoring rules. These include continuous changes in ownership thresholds and requirements to obtain regulatory pre-approvals before certain investments may take place.
Financial firms must be able to deal with the complexities that arise from multiple, overlapping rules coming from regulatory bodies outside of traditional investment supervision. They must also accurately monitor their equity holdings in designated sensitive industries, ensure prohibited equities are not traded and respond quickly to rule changes. With no single source of comprehensive rules and reliable industry classification information, this can be a major challenge – especially when using manual, resource-intensive processes.
The new Sensitive Industries module from AxiomSL expands its solution to incorporate both industry and sub-industry codes into its EquityView data dictionary architecture, enabling a higher degree of accuracy around industry classification tagging. Clients can configure foreign and local jurisdictions according to the entity group’s location, thereby triggering relevant rules, while dashboards allow visibility into multiple types of notifications, including pre-approval checks and proximity alerts.
“Providing a wide range of rules coverage and enhancing the data dictionary with GICS and other industry classifications necessary to correctly monitor sensitive industries, will enable financial firms to invest with confidence,” says Gaurav Chandra, Global Product Manager, Global Shareholding Disclosures.
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