The 4th annual Fuse event organized by Orion Advisor Services just concluded in Park City, Utah. The event featured over 25 technology firms that serve the registered investment adviser (“RIA”) industry coming together to develop and a demo a number of new advisor technology tools ranging from streamlined data collection to new client portals to compliance. We are incredibly honored and humbled to announce that our new third party service provider information security due diligence tool won this year’s Best in Show Award.
Our new MyRIACompliance® tool helps to Automate Third Party Service Provider Due Diligence
For our technology development project this year, we thought we’d take a step back and focus perhaps a bit more on industry collaboration rather than a new traditional technology integration. In particular, we sought to help RIA firms more easily meet increasing information and cyber security compliance requirements.
As the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) continues to issue a steady stream of guidance related to cyber security, one common theme has been a focus on third party service providers. More than ever, RIA firms are leaning heavily on third party technology providers. However, with that growing dependence and the likelihood that clients’ personally identifiable information (“PII”) related to Regulation S-P is possessed by third party providers, regulators are zeroing in on third party service provider diligence.
Unfortunately, third party service provider due diligence can be cumbersome process for RIAs and for the service providers that support them. Today, it’s often a haphazard process with the RIA contacting the vendor and hopefully asking the right questions and for the right documentation. Without an automated process, RIAs may not have the latest information security information on file and the RIA’s record keeping related to due diligence may not be well organized or easy to produce during a regulatory examination.
Thus, the automated solution we built exclusively at Fuse this year is our first attempt to help automate the service provider diligence process. Some of the features of this new tool we demonstrated include:
- Ability for the RIA firm to automatically “connect” to current service providers via MyRIACompliance®
- RIA firms automatically receive the latest alerts and documentation from “connected” service providers
- RIA firms can electronically document and store all due diligence information in the firm’s online compliance log
- The compliance log is fully exportable in an organized manner to capture the full due diligence history
For the purposes of the demonstrated, we partnered with two of the industry’s leading technology providers: Orion Advisor Services and Redtail CRM.
The new tool will also allow third party service providers to do the following on MyRIACompliance®:
- Digitally confirm clients before choosing to only allow for sharing of information with “connected” clients
- Upload all information and relevant documents to MyRIACompliance® for immediate distribution to clients
- View which clients have accessed the latest due diligence documentation
A special thanks to Orion Advisor Services to once again hosting a terrific event. The quality of new tools and integrations developed at this year’s Fuse event was even more impressive than the past two years.
Don’t underestimate #RegTech opportunities – @RIAInABox wins #FuseUtah Best In Show #FinTech, for the third year in a row! #ThreePeat
— MichaelKitces (@MichaelKitces) September 9, 2017
Fuse 2017 Video Recaps to Check Out
From Bill Winterberg’s FPPad:
You can also view the full list of Fuse 2017 award winners here.
Official Release Date of new MyRIACompliance Service Provider Due Diligence Tool
While the official release date of this new tool has yet to be determined, given the strong interest, we will look to roll out this new capability in the coming months. If you’d like to learn more or see a demo, please contact us.
You can also check out the recent press release announcing the official launch of our new RIA automated employee trade monitoring tool which won the “Best in Show” Award at Fuse 2016.