ume was awarded 2022 Regtech of the year at the European Fund Summit on 1st December 2022. The award is a recognition for the success of the ume platform that now connects hundreds of investment fund managers with thousands of distributors in 100 different countries.
Asking a question clearly, with a single voice, will elicit a clearer answer
Everyone has too much work to do. If you’re in fund compliance, do you spend more time on due diligence questionnaires for your largest bank distributors, or on tens or even hundreds of smaller distributors where your relationship may be more sporadic? If you’re a distributor with not enough hours in the day, do you respond to the biggest global investment managers first and hope the smaller ones don’t hassle you for missing their impossible deadlines?
At ume, we have spent a lot of time looking at how we can reduce the expense and effort spent by asset management companies attempting to update their understanding of each distributor. We’ve also looked at how to reduce the typical delay in obtaining distributor responses from anything up to nine months almost to real time.
The answer seems simple, as the growing list of asset manager clients for the ume platform demonstrates. If distributor questionnaires are harmonised using a single platform, distributors will find them easier to complete and return. Creating this efficiency to the advantage of everyone involved is good for both asset manager and distributor – and especially for heads of compliance.
Everyone benefits if the fund industry as a whole asks a single set of questions, particularly as asset managers tend to use the same distributors. Eliminating mechanical repetition is a big incentive for distributors to update their information more regularly and completely.
A simpler process can eliminate the problem of outstanding questionnaires. Standardisation also negates unintended bias as all distributors can be compared on the same basis through ume’s automated risk evaluation tool. Distributors can therefore be assessed on a continuous basis and compared in a consistent way.
Deploying ume’s automated due diligence questionnaire process is a win-win for everyone. Distributors update when they need to, when an investment manager asks follow-up questions that prompts a revision to their answers, or from a regular prompt at least every 12 months.
Because the distributors are required to complete only a single questionnaire, customised for their organisational requirements, investment managers will get higher quality and more timely data, since updated information is available to every investment manager the distributor works with.
We eliminate the volume of questionnaires that distributors are required to handle, from possible hundreds to one, and reduce the likelihood of the smallest niche fund firms finding their responses are the distributor’s lowest priority.
Mutualisation of efficiencies is not about gaining a competitive advantage, but about everyone doing an essential task well. The ume platform represents a new business model, connecting not just organisations, but people, resources and knowledge, creating value and making it easy to exchange.
It’s scalable, eliminates friction and creates beneficial feedback loops for our clients in the investment community and improves the quality of data. Our ‘collaborate to compete’ approach has made us the largest fund distributor due diligence ecosystem. Saving time and cost on compliance while ensuring better quality enables our investment manager clients and their distributors to focus on their central roles in the asset management industry.
If you’d like to know how to obtain more time to spend on the important stuff, please get in touch.
Collaborate to know your fund distributors better, and less painfully
Distributor due diligence is, frankly, a thankless task for investment managers who send questionnaires out and the distributors who are asked to complete them. But due diligence is a regulatory requirement before both sides enter a relationship, and on a regular ongoing basis. Standardising questionnaires and their transmission between investment managers and distributors is efficient for everyone involved. Initial questionnaires are simpler to complete and return and updates can be more frequent, leading to better compliance with the law.
Typically, we find investment managers send out distributor questionnaires infrequently to distributors they assume are low risk. But everyone uses a different format, whether Word, Excel or PDF, and has a different set of questions. Distributors receive them by e-mail, review, circulate and return them. That’s the theory, at least. In practice many go unanswered because of the burden of what is often a highly inefficient process placed on all parties.
Asset management firms in Europe may work with anything from five to 1,500 distributors, from one-man-band independent advisers to the largest banks and online platforms. The due diligence process can require significant resources and it is no surprise that questionnaires get lost in the system or that answers are often of low quality.
At ume, we agree with you: the whole process could be much better. Cost-effective and efficient regulatory compliance processes can be a competitive advantage. A reduced need for human time and effort is good for the bottom line, and ongoing compliance reduces the risk of reputational damage and regulatory penalties. And a quicker distributor due diligence process can also speed marketing efforts and the flow of assets into your funds.
We’ve also built a digital platform to handle the questionnaires, doing away with bottlenecks like e-mail and incompatible formats. This turns a highly laborious task for distributors into a smooth continuous updating process. On both sides, the workload is reduced and maintaining due diligence compliance becomes an easier ongoing process. And because data is standardised, it is easier to compare one distributor with another.
The algorithms underlying the platform also continuously re-evaluate the data whenever any distributor updates their information and automatically adjusts the risk assessment that fund groups receive.
Better quality, more regular information makes it easier to ascertain on an ongoing basis whether a distributor is fit and proper, and the right choice for an asset manager. The process also substantially reduces the resources required and ensures more responsive compliance than the ad hoc approach of the past, as well as ensuring much greater transparency. At company level, boards and management committees can exercise their control obligations much more effectively.
If you would like to know your distributors better we’re ready to talk to you.
On November 15th, the Luxembourg Finance Innovation Summit celebrated its 10th anniversary with more than 250 professionals. During the event, the Luxembourg Finance Awards were distributed, recognizing the best practices and solutions available in Luxembourg.
After having won in 2017 the award for Finance Start-up of the year, ume won the 2018 award for RegTech Innovation of the year. The story continues!
http://www.infinance.lu/actualites/luxembourg-finance-awards-2018-and-winners-are
The RegTech 100 for 2019 is announced to recognize the pioneering companies transforming compliance, risk management and cybersecurity
The world’s most innovative technology solution providers that address the challenges of dealing with regulatory issues within financial services, were announced today by RegTech Analyst, a specialist research firm.
The RegTech (regulatory technology) industry has seen huge growth in the last two years as banks and financial institutions grapple with the unrelenting pace of regulatory change across all jurisdictions. Over $4bn has been invested in RegTech companies since the beginning of 2016.
As a result, this year’s process to identify the leading 100 companies in the RegTech space was even more competitive than last year. A panel of analysts and industry experts voted from a longlist of 824 companies produced by RegTech Analyst, compared to a list of 416 last year. The finalists were recognized for their innovative use of technology to solve a significant industry problem, or to generate cost savings or efficiency improvements across the compliance function.
Fifty-five new companies entered the RegTech 100 this year. The risk management category saw the biggest increase with an additional 10 companies gaining RegTech 100 status to occupy 47 places on the list, while companies offering solutions that address MiFID II regulation in Europe saw a 10% increase in their number to take a total of 38 places.
European and North American companies still dominate the RegTech 100 with 60% and 29% of places, respectively. Within Europe, UK companies enhanced the country’s leading position on the list with 30 representatives compared to 26 last year. The emergence of a thriving global RegTech ecosystem has seen companies from another 21 countries make the list, including Ireland, Switzerland, Singapore, India and Luxembourg.
“The impact of the most innovative RegTech companies will be measured in billions of dollars over the next few years,”according to Mariyan Dimitrov, head of research at RegTech Analyst. “RegTech 100 companies offer solutions that enhance processes across the entire compliance function, including onboarding verification, risk management, communications monitoring, information security and reporting by using the latest technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, natural language processing and biometrics.”
A full list of the RegTech 100 is available at www.RegTech100.com. More detailed information on all companies as well as in-depth industry analysis is available in the Global RegTech Review (www.GlobalRegTechReview.com).
Paperjam magazine puts at the heart of its edition of November 2018, 50 start-ups “made in Luxembourg” to follow in 2019. Fintech, regtech, application, artificial intelligence, software, virtual reality and others …
The editorial staff decided to call on a panel of 11 personalities with complementary expertise – investors, entrepreneurs, incubators, public bodies – to help them make their choice. If the definition of a start-up is debated, Paperjam retains these criteria: a company having a maximum of five years, proposing an innovative solution that does not exist on a large scale in the market, and which has development ambitions international.
ume is very pleased to have been selected by this jury!
http://paperjam.lu/news/ume-le-tripadvisor-de-lindustrie-des-fonds
Fintech Europe 2018 is a venture development program for entrepreneurs creating technological solutions that help financial institutions, financial markets, regulators and consumers interact with financial products and services in the digital age.
During the Spring of 2018, Village Capital, PayPal and Middlegame Ventures will scale and support innovative Fintech ventures to foster a new generation of fully compliant financial solutions tailored for the digital age and centered on the financial health of retail and commercial consumers.
On November 30th, more than 250 finance professionals gathered at the Etablissement Namur for the 2017 edition of the Luxembourg Finance Innovation Summit. After a series of conferences on the topics of innovation in insurance, financial services and payments, and an insightful startups session, the Luxembourg Finance Awards were distributed to acknowledge and recognized the best practices and solutions available in the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg.
ume won the Finance Startup of the Year as it enables to save up to 90% of the time and efforts on due diligence process and helps make better informed decision and reduce risks related to fund distributors.
With ume, know you fund distributors ! You can score your distributors, connect to your network and optimize your due diligence process.