There is no place for guesswork in the workplace

Whatever your opinion of compliance is, technology tools to manage it are necessary additions to the workplace. The trick is offering a suite of software which is effective and accurate, without actually feeling intrusive. 

David Rowland, CTO at StarCompliance (Star), says his company has it covered. 

Star’s suite of compliance software gives firms full visibility into the outside business activities of their employees, enabling them to steer clear of risk and costly conflicts of interest, and operate with confidence.

Star is now partnering with SMBC, a Japan-based banking group with a global client base. This alliance will give SMBC the tools it needs to monitor and better understand employees’ charitable donations, private investments, board memberships and other outside business activities.

“Regulatory constraints and banking practices differ widely around the world. Star offers the flexibility and adaptability SMBC needs to operate across a vast and varied financial landscape,” says Rowland.

Rowland adds that SMBC values its employees and wants to make sure they’re secure about how their personal dealings could affect their professional careers. The STAR platform monitors for employee conflicts of interest, ensuring issues are flagged and reconciled in a timely manner.

“Missing the impact of employees’ outside business activity could be devastating to an organisation. The financial ramifications and reputational damage to both the firm and the employee can be irreversible,” says Rowland. 

Star’s software mitigates these concerns by providing a single, centralised place for monitoring employee activity and anticipating potential conflicts. 

The STAR platform also frees up compliance officers to do the higher-level follow-up and investigative work they’re best suited for.

Rowland says that “the STAR Platform allows SMBC and other financial institutions to stay ahead of the ever-evolving regulatory world, ensuring they can comply with confidence, lower their overall risk and protect their assets.”

“Our software is highly configurable,” Rowland continues. “Different organisations each interpret regulations in their own way. Star’s compliance software is a ‘layer’ that sits on top of their own rules and policies.” 

One of the biggest upsides to running Star’s software is the amount of data that can be harvested. And with Star, the more data you gather, the greater the opportunities for insights into your business – allowing you to develop and hone best business practices. But Rowland explains all this data is a heavy burden too. 

“The amount of data we're harvesting, processing, and analysing now is vast,” he observes. “It’s only going to continue to grow. Not just because the volume of traffic is increasing and the number of users on our platform is expanding. Our remit is also widening as we start looking at different asset classes, such as crypto.” 

“We’re almost a data organisation. This means we’re investing heavily in our data platform that's going to allow us to become even more sophisticated in the way we operate.” 

This sophistication translates to more automation and greater use of machine learning as the software looks at more complex types of anomaly detection. 

“So, instead of having static rules for how we view a transaction, we can look at patterns and trends, as well as anomalies, and identify pockets of the organisation that have a slightly higher risk profile than others,” Rowland says.

“It’s all about what we can automate, how we take greater advantage of all this data, and give compliance teams better tools to do their job – at scale, faster and more easily.”

Read the full SMBC digital report HERE.