EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Donna Sardanopoli, President of Regulatory Intelligence Compliance Solutions Inc. (RICS) is a decorated, 24-year veteran of the securities industry. During the first nine years of her professional career, she was a key player for the New York Stock Exchange as a Principal Compliance Sales Practice Examiner. Ms. Sardanopoli performed critical regulatory examinations of Broker-Dealers and maintained responsibility for training new, incoming examiners. It was during this time that she began to discover shortcomings at Regulatory Agencies and Broker-Dealers with respect to their ability to easily and efficiently streamline the wholistic audit process, and to effectively train its newest audit staff.
She soon after accepted a position as First Vice President at UBS Financial Services, Inc., in charge of managing all regulatory examinations for the firm's Broker-Dealer, branch offices and related subsidiaries. Once again, Ms. Sardanopoli encountered inherent challenges with respect to efficient and effective audit processing, but moreover, she identified a startling dearth of relevant subject matter expertise that would more successfully support the audit process for each member of her audit team. The byproduct of her findings over this 17-year period of her career gave birth to her aforementioned company as a workable solution to the challenges that she had identified as epidemic to the financial services industry. After conducting, reviewing and analyzing literally thousands of Broker-Dealers as a Regulator, and leading the regulatory exam department for one of the world's largest Broker-Dealers, realized that the industry was ripe for the development and implementation of tools that actually addressed these areas of concern in each environment including compliance departments, audit departments and training programs.
Due to her experience and level of expertise in managing hundreds of SEC, NYSE, NASD/FINRA and State regulatory examinations, Ms. Sardanopoli recognized the answer...What was required was the solution that has become the RICS Regulatory Change Management System™, which employs a process that gathers and analyzes information, filters the irrelevant data and efficiently directs critical information to applicable subject matter workflow.
In summary, the goal should be for all financial services firm is to employ the RICS Regulatory Change Management System™ that monitors change, alerts the organization to risk conditions, and enables accountability and collaboration around changes impacting each firm. This requires a common process to deliver real-time accountability and transparency across regulatory areas with a common system of record to monitor regulatory change, audit and measure the impact, implement appropriate corrective actions, update policies, and provide training for certain personnel. Financial services organizations must seek a process for collaboration, accountability, and most importantly, integration between a regulatory intelligence framework and content provider. In an ideal scenario, there should exist a solution from a single-source provider offering "one-stop shopping" in order to maximize coherence and congruency, while eliminating the potential for an ensuing lack of accountability that results from sourcing these solutions from fragmented, "siloed" providers. In short, this is exactly what Regulatory Intelligence Compliance Solutions provides, and ultimately, what we are committed to delivering to our clients.
The patent-pending, well-defined RICS Regulatory Change Management System™ audit platform streamlines the entire audit process and can be utilized for any industry (i.e. healthcare, insurance etc.). In addition RICS created certain subject matter workflows to facilitate the need for mandated regulatory audits in the financial services industry: FINRA Rule 3110 (c) Internal Inspections, FINRA Rule 3310 AML Compliance Program, IA Rule 206(4)-7 - The Compliance Rule, etc.
The updated actionable content is also inherently capable and can be effectively utilized for the following:
- RICS Dynamic Audit Processing Platform™
- Benefit Statement: Provides the industry's first dynamic, collaborative audit tool that delivers measurable real-time accountability and transparency across manifold regulatory areas with a common system of record.
- RICS Perpetual Cycle Compliance Testing & Risk Assessment™
- Benefit Statement: Provides a user friendly platform that will be customizable and use defined in future versions. So as to provide the client the tools, subject matter expertise and flexibility to perform formal, continual compliance testing and risk assessment in a proactive nature.
Ms. Sardanopoli's vision is to provide the industry not only with the regulatory change management technology and guidance, but moreover the actionable subject matter workflow that enables firms to perform all these required compliance activities with purpose and corrective resolution capacity.
- Benefit Statement: Provides the industry's first platform with process for collaboration, accountability, and most importantly, integration between a regulatory intelligence framework and content provider. A solution from a single-source provider offering "one-stop shopping".
There exists manifold applicability for these platforms that encompass various different disciplines and organizations in the financial services industry and a significant number of related industries as well. The tools and resource architecture platform that we have developed already has the potential to capitalize on these multiple market opportunities with minimal modification. This unique aspect to our product suite provides a tremendous ROI for future initiatives related to a few examples that are listed below:
- Government/ Regulators
- Broker Dealers
- Investment Advisors
- Consulting Firms
- Accounting firms/The Big Four
- Compliance Solution Companies
RICS was contracted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Division of Office Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE), and has provided training workshops to the 11 regional offices. The focus of the training workshops has been, "Performing an effective and streamlined Regulatory Branch Examination" in addition to utilizing RICS risk data analytics to facilitate the process.
RICS is now contracted by OCIE to train all their incoming examiners
Currently RICS is involved in various project engagements, discovery discussion and contract negotiations with multiple clients/prospective clients that range from The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Broker Dealers and consulting firms. We are capable of handling a wide range of clients serving many support, compliance and regulatory roles.
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