New solutions to meet new circumstances
Compliance domain will see new solutions, new applications as covid impact eases:
Covid is virtually all-pervasive, impacting every aspect of our lives. There are questions raised by compliance practitioners as to the shape the function will take and how easy or difficult it will be for corporates to fulfil the compliance obligations as they come out of the lockdowns. Many of the industries may have to develop and adopt new applications and methodologies to meet the compliance requirements, even during the pandemic.
For example, Fincare Small Finance Bank introduced a new tech solution for periodic compliance review (off site) of branches and banking outlets for regulatory compliance which helped the bank to strengthen its effectiveness and efficiency and become a higher valueadding function.
In the case of ESAF Small Finance Bank, quarterly collection of compliance certification across the bank has been automated using an internally developed solution.
CONSTANT IMPROVEMENT
In the case of Clix Capital, Prakash Shetty says the company always work in line with its vision and mission and that is broader than mere introducing a new app or adding more features. “We continue to strive towards improving, modifying and adding more features in the company’s existing customer apps, reporting and information systems that are used by the board, stakeholders and for regulators to provide oversight,” he says.
Vikas Gupta of Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance. says the company has worked with its respective stakeholders on various automation processes, especially of regulatory reports so that human dependency is minimal. “Lot of work has been done in data governance to ensure that the company has access to quality data and we can provide necessary comfort to the regulator,” he says.
Future Generali General Insurance has not added any new compliance application, specially because of the lockdown. Instead, the usage of existing IT
compliance applications have increased, says Conjeevaram Bharadwaj.
NEW FEATURES ADDED
Have institutions added new features to their existing compliance applications?
Devika Praveen says being a digitalfirst bank, Fincare Small Finance Bank has always pioneered adoption of modern technological tools for making its operations efficient and effective. And the potential for technology to modernize compliance is immense. “We have, among other things, enabled auto-synchronization of regulatory guidelines hosted in IC+ (Insta Circulars) application. This has proved to be very effective in offering strategic counsel and insights to the leadership team of the bank,” says she.
Vikas Gupta says compliance functions which have been automated are digital signoff and automation of data governance. “We have been working closely with other functions on various automation projects in the areas of regulatory reporting and governance,” he adds.
At Future Generali General Insurance, existing applications have been made more user friendly. Conjeevaram Bharadwaj says, for example, automated audio-visual methods of compliance requirements have been introduced. These are compliance training presentations with audio visual effects which can be used as self-learning tool without the need for a facilitator.
“These methods have been introduced, especially to disseminate the compliance requirements to the sales force. Robotic applications have also been introduced in customer-facing compliance requirements. For example, to ensure that customer has purchased the life insurance policy as per his application, a pre-issuance verification call is conducted to ensure that customer understands what he/she is purchasing. We have moved from audio-based verification to video-call based verification of customer understanding of the product purchased. This is an important sales compliance requirement,” he says.
NEW APPLICATIONS IN PIPELINE
Are they planning new applications in the light of the developments?
Prakash Shetty of Clix Capital reiterates that the company continues to strive and bring the best products to its customers, which they can use conveniently and offer flexibility for the ever-changing environment. “The new world is more digital and the advent of regulations such as video KYC have provided the necessary fuel to all our future products and endeavours,” he says.
Fincare Small Finance Bank is in the process of Phase 2 implementation of a Compliance Certification and Monitoring System (CERMO+) tool, which assists in keeping tab of compliance for both regulatory and internal guidelines. The tool, says Devika, gives a comprehensive view and can be used for evaluating trends in overall compliance score of the bank.
Vikas Gupta says Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance, in spite of the difficult times, has been able to plan and update its current in-house developed Compliance Monitoring Tool to make it more effective, efficient and agile. In parallel, it is also working on RPA projects to automate repetitive processes.
At Future Generali General Insurance Co, development of robotic applications is the next project under which compliance requirements can be verified through an automated bot application. “For example, insurance companies create a mascot, which interacts with the customer on real time basis and records the answers instead of human interactions. Such automated robotic applications also remove the human bias/conflicts in the process of verification,” says Bharadwaj.