AGILE Newsletter Issue 5 | Q1 | 2021

AGILE Newsletter Issue 5 | Q1 | 2021

Date
2021-03-26

Introduction

Welcome to the latest AGILE Reporter newsletter – a summary of the news and activities around VERMEG’s regulatory reporting platform.

Approval and Auditability – Digital Governance

During the course of 2021 one of our areas of focus will be Governance and Auditability. To this end, the current release of AgileREPORTER incorporates significant enhancements to configuration governance.

AgileREPORTER users will now be able to take advantage of verification workflows for the creation and update of configuration objects such as Users or Privilege Groups to ensure that a firm can exercise control of its reporting environment according to precise governance specifications.

Users or Privilege Groups

These configuration changes are also API-sable to facilitate integration as part of a firm’s digitalization initiative.

To further enhance scrutiny of the reporting process, solution auditability has been enriched in in a number of areas such as Return Editions, Validation and Return Adjustments.

Agile Reporter Screen

Future Roadmap

Items to look forward to in our Q2 delivery for AgileREPORTER include:

Resubmission

This will be an optional piece of functionality that expands on the current ability to amend and resubmit a return to a regulator. Users will now, if desired, be able to preserve validation results and form variables for previously submitted returns as well as drill down to view allocations of these prior submissions.

Regulator Variation

We are also introducing the ability to maintain variations on a common regulation. For example, the pan European COREP reporting structure can involve variations in validation rules when submitting to certain regulators, this new functionality will allow clients to maintain a single product in AgileREPORTER with different flavors for different regulators where necessary.

Product Updates from UI

Currently, users are able to patch validation rules from individual products – this allows a more nimble approach to solution upgrades in that specific changes can be made without bringing the production system down.

This functionality will be expanded to cover other solution components such as return templates and metadata content. All changes contained in patches will be transparent to users, i.e. details of all changes to be made will be visible before being applied.

Investment Firms Prudential Regime UK/Investment Firms Regime EU

The Financial Conduct Authority concluded the feedback process for the first of three consultation papers on the Investment Firms Prudential Regime (IFPR) which will guide the implementation of this regulation scheduled to come into effect January 2022. This will involve some deviation from the Investment Firms Regime (IFR) that will apply to similar firms in Continental Europe.

UK prudential regime AR

VERMEG will be supporting both regimes and hosted a webinar on 11th March in partnership with Avantage Reply to brief impacted clients as to the impact to their business and resultant reporting process. This webinar is now available on our YouTube channel for anyone unable to make the session at the time.

We will plan follow up webinars as the FCA continues its consultation process to ensure that our client community is up to date with developments.

In the meantime, if your firm is affected by the IFR or IFPR please get in touch to find out how VERMEG can help.

The CARES Act

At the beginning of the year Katherine Tornarites one of our experts in North America reflected on the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) in the US. Put in place to try to mitigate some of the effects of COVID on the economy and financial markets, this has facilitated schemes such as Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) whose intention was to assist business suffering pandemic related hardship.

AR Screen4

In an unintended consequence of these measures, the increased levels of lending and, in turn, balance sheets have resulted in a number of firms passing asset thresholds for additional reporting requirements. Katherine discusses this unexpected increase in regulatory burden in her blog which is available here:

https://www.vermeg.com/blog/the-cares-act-and-community-banking-an-unexpected-consequence/

Bank of England – Data Transformation Plan published

On the 23rd of February, the Bank of England published the latest update to their strategic review of data collection over the next decade ‘Transforming Data Collection from the UK Financial Sector’.Bank of England picture

The Data Collection Transformation Plan outlined the vision and next steps for this strategic initiative whose aim is to shape the evolution of reporting over the next 5-10 years.

On 15th March Angus Moir, Head of Data Collection Transformation at the Bank of England joined us to outline the conclusions of this stage of the process including

  • Defining and adopting common data standards
  • Modernizing reporting instructions
  • Moving to a more streamlined, efficient approach to data collection.

He also summarized the initial proposals as to the contents of this program of work, together with thoughts on the constituents of the core team comprising staff from the Bank, the FCA and staff from the firms from whom the Bank collects data and third party providers.

If you weren’t able to attend this event, please contact us using the details at the end of this newsletter.

AGILE Reporter in APAC – the solution of choice in Singapore

Our team in APAC recently announced that all clients of our AgileREPORTER solution in Singapore have gone live with the New-MAS610 framework (effective from 31st January 2021) and that all of these firms have now successfully sent their first formal submissions to the regulators. This New-MAS610 framework has been a great success story in APAC with this new requirement currently constituting by far the majority of the reporting obligations of our clients.

As a result of these successes, VERMEG is now the leading Regulatory Reporting vendor in Singapore and we look forward to growing our client community in the future.

In addition, VERMEG has been accredited as one of the pre-approved ICM (Infocomm) vendors in the IMDA Go Digital program in Singapore.

INFOCOMM MEDIA DEVELOPEMENT AUTHORITY

The Go Digital program aims to help firms in the region use digital technologies and build stronger capabilities to allow them to capitalize on growth opportunities in the digital economy. Companies who engage VERMEG as part of their digital journey will be eligible for a grant from the Singaporean government.

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss any of the topics above or any other matter relating to your Regulatory Reporting.

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