Ensuring financial services’ firms marketing messages accurately reflect what’s really on offer has long been a challenge for compliance professionals. And with other areas of the business attracting substantial and highly public penalties from regulators, the danger was that this function didn’t get the attention it deserved.  But regulators are starting to pay more attention, and that means compliance teams need to as well. Back in December 2, FINRA sanctioned four firms – M1 Finance LLC, Open to the Public Investing, SoFi Securities and SogoTrade – for advertising related transgression ..read more

ValidMind has secured $8.1 million in a seed funding round. The investment will focus on developing model risk management and AI governance within the banking and financial services sectors. The company says the seed round was over-subscribed, demonstrating support from investors in its long-term vision to be the certifying authority for all AI solutions, starting with optimisation of financial institutions’ model risk management processes and enabling efficient and responsible AI governance. The funding round was led by Point72 Ventures and backed by investors including Third Prime, AI Fund ..read more

NICE Actimize has released ARCHIVE-X, a cloud-based, all communications archiving and records management solution that provides buy-side, sell-side and online trading platforms with one solution to support regulatory requirements for communications archiving and records management. The aim is to help financial institutions achieve more robust records lifecycle management and reduce compliance risk by archiving all communications securely in the NICE Compliance Cloud. ARCHIVE-X is open and agnostic, allowing it to capture any communications and related data a financial institution needs to stor ..read more

Global Screening Services (GSS), a provider of transaction screening, has completed a Series A2 funding round raising over $47 million (£37 million). The investment will support the London-based company’s transition from a development to operational phase as its cloud-native platform prepares to go live with inaugural clients. Originally incubated by AlixPartners, GSS tackles the complexity of sanctions with a platform that operates as a collaborative hub, bringing together financial institutions and industry partners to deliver efficient and effective transaction screening for sanctions. Alix ..read more

SmartSearch, a UK provider of digital compliance and anti-money laundering (AML) software, has received a large investment from Triple Private Equity. The private equity firm will gain a majority share in SmartSearch and work with the company to support its core markets and continued expansion following the release of its latest technology platform last year. SmartSearch founders and existing shareholders will retain a minority in the company. Founded in 2011, SmartSearch offers solutions for AML compliance, customer due diligence, Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB). Its AML ..read more

Communications surveillance came under focus in two sessions at the recent A-Team Group Trading Technology Summit in London in February.  During a morning Keynote session, Andrew Delaney, President and Chief Content Officer at A-team sat down with Paul Liesching, Chief Revenue Officer at 1Global to discuss “Navigating the Complexity of Communications Surveillance.”  An afternoon panel focused on “The Evolution of Communications Surveillance – How to Manage Risk, Improve Oversight and Ensure Compliance in Today’s Complex environment.” This panel comprised: Moderator: Anish Amin, Senio ..read more

In 2023, Openmarkets Australia was fined the largest ever penalty imposed by the?Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) of $4.5 million. Among other observations, the regulators noted that Openmarkets had not appropriately calibrated its post-trade surveillance system and that this resulted in an unmanageable volume of alerts, most of which were not reviewed.  “This outcome sends a clear message to market participants that breaches of market integrity rules will result in substantial penalties that should not be seen as a cost of doing business.” Market Abuse and Trade Su ..read more

As regulators in the UK, EU, and US continue to come down hard on firms failing to maintain adequate control of business conducted over digital communications channels, Smarsh’s acquisition of TeleMessage in February aims to broaden the company’s offerings in the digital communications compliance and intelligence space.  Says CEO Kim Crawford Goodman. “Together with TeleMessage, Smarsh extends its platform of communications compliance technologies. We now solve the broadest scope of customer mobile messaging and voice use cases, capturing data across various devices, direct capture f ..read more

Following the decision by Stephan Wolf, CEO of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), to step down from the role on 24 June 2024 after a decade of leading the foundation from its start-up phase to the growing organisation it is today, the GLEIF board of directors has appointed Alexandre Kech to the position. Kech will become CEO on 26 June 2024, but will join the foundation as CEO-elect on 1 May 2024 to allow a smooth transition. Kech has experience in finance, infrastructure, blockchain, and standardisation gained through a variety of leadership positions held over the past 25 ..read more

Duco, a provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) AI-powered data automation, has released a transaction reporting eligibility validator that provides an independent validation of internal eligibility rules by using field-by-field comparison of individual financial services firms’ rules versus existing ESMA eligibility requirements. The solution highlights under and overreporting using Duco’s reconciliation and exception management capabilities, and regulatory industry knowledge from Quorsus, part of Capgemini’s financial services strategic business unit that provides consultancy to financial i ..read more