Support for Auditing
The word "Audit" is overloaded with many meanings in the world of finance.  ComplyPlus provides support for two areas of auditing.  The first type is full support for internal/external auditing of the compliance process.  ComplyPlus keeps a complete history of prior events, the underlying data, and resolutions including approvals and overrides for internal and/or external auditors.  ComplyPlus also provides support for pre-definable sets of text (usually generated by your legal counsel) for use in closing and documenting compliance violations (work items).  ComplyPlus ships with a variety of reports to help auditors (including your board) review the compliance process.

The second area of auditing supported is auditing of ComplyPlus itself.  The compliance department is afloat in a sea of change, whether from changes in regulations or from the introduction of new products.  One such challenge is making sure your compliance system is keeping up with these changes. 

ComplyPlus provides built-in functionality to help with certain types of changes.  For instance, by attaching rules to a dynamic list of portfolios defined by a query, as new products are released that meet the query criteria, the rules will be applied automatically.  However, for some things ComplyPlus needs your help.   

ComplyPlus supports auditing of itself by scheduling periodic review of rule setup and definition.  In addition, external events such as an update to a prospectus can trigger a review of the associated rules.  When you define a rule, ComplyPlus prompts you for a review schedule.  ComplyPlus will then place work items in workflow to match your auditing schedule.  You can setup review schedules for any object in the system, including portfolios.  It might be useful to setup portfolio review schedules ninety days before fiscal year end.  To support other events such as prospectus updates, ComplyPlus allows you to associate keywords with any object in the system, including rules and portfolios.  Then to schedule a review, simply search by these keywords to generate a list of items for review and ComplyPlus takes care of the rest.  Common keywords are areas of law such as 2a-7, client fund family names, identifiers for a particular prospectus printing, etc.  And of course, ComplyPlus has reports to show audit results, individuals involved and the date of previous and future audits.

Lastly and a little outside of auditing, ComplyPlus helps you organize your policies and procedures.  ComplyPlus allows you to create policies and procedures manuals, prospectuses, and client mandate documents and attach them to rules.  In this way, your staff will know what to do when a rule is triggered and why the rule exists.  Since the rules cover a wide variety of issues from data quality to law, these documents preserve corporate knowledge, improve training, reduce time demands on senior staff, facilitate communications with staff outside the compliance department and reduce compliance violations.