SunGard Highlights Ten Trends in Wealth Management Risk and Regulations

Eileen Van Scoy, executive vice president of SunGard’s wealth management business, said, “Banks, brokerage firms and trust companies must address shifting client demands and requirements, while also accommodating new regulatory mandates and initiatives to reduce risk and increase transparency. In order to compete effectively and grow their businesses, wealth managers must be proactive in assessing their processes, people and systems to ensure efficiency and service enhancements. They should also proactively provide a solid information framework to deliver the on-demand transparency that clients, management and regulators increasingly demand.”

Ten trends driving and challenging risk and regulation initiatives in wealth management are:

1. Compliance officers must constantly educate themselves and respond quickly to new and changing regulations.

2. Post-Madoff, revised custody rules require bank, trust and brokerage organizations to clearly identify and manage the impact of counterparty risk.

3. Wealth managers must quickly reassess readiness and address gaps within compliance and risk programs, business processes and IT infrastructures to prepare for widespread reform.

4. Firms must improve efficiencies and address gaps in order to fully focus on strategic, client-facing activities to improve client retention and satisfaction.

5. Experts with financial services and technology domain knowledge are highly valued to analyze business practices, platforms, and third party arrangements.

6. The effective management of enterprise data sources, standardization, reporting and real-time information is critical to compliance.

7. Many organizations are hiring consulting resources or revamping their internal staff to achieve an ideal level of compliance within required timelines.

8. There will continue to be significant funding requirements to comply with financial reform and risk management initiatives but this should result in more efficient processing, analytics and technology infrastructures for financial organizations.

9. Addressing compliance requirements from gathering enterprise-wide information, on-demand data and real-time analytics should help firms respond to queries from multiple stakeholders and clients.

10. Firms are actively leveraging their technology and process investments to cover multiple aspects of risk management and compliance, such as adapting Anti-Money Laundering solutions to monitor for fraud.