Information and analytics solutions provider IHS Markit has begun its rollout of Outreach360, a platform for managing documentation and communication concerning regulatory compliance, according to company officials.
The platform will reduce compliance costs and standardize communication with contacts about compliance, says Darren Thomas, managing director and head of the Counterparty Manager service containing the Outreach360 platform, at IHS Markit. “Based on our interactions with banks, it will be about a 25 to 30 percent reduction in costs, the effort involved and outreach, because the work need only be done once,” he says.
Outreach360 automates some of these processes to save costs. “Once data is normalized and put in a central portal like Outreach360, firms can extract all that data and pull it directly into all their systems,” says Thomas. “They don’t have to transfer from data from emails to their systems or risk mis-translating what’s been done. They get the full data download aspect as well as tracking every email that comes back.”
Outreach360 also enhances leveraging of data for other uses, according to Thomas. “Buy-side firms can create their own custom questionnaires for any regulatory outreach,” he says. “This will be flexible to apply to all future regulations globally, and sell-side requests for information. Once the buy-side firm fills out the data for a single entity, they can re-use that data. They can enter data once for that entity and distribute it out for multiple broker-dealer relationships as they need.”
IHS Markit has worked with trade associations including ISDA and SIFMA to identify entity classification data necessary for inclusion in Outreach360. The company has also held forums for buy- and sell-side firms to collect their requirements for handling entity data, according to Thomas. Outreach360 can set parameters for confirming acceptance of communications — whether just by not declining a request (known as “negative consent”), returning an acknowledgement or an electronic signature, he adds. In particular, IHS Markit worked with buy-side firms on due diligence questionnaires for electronic trading and order handling.
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