Rick Smith
Head of Insurance Solutions
Rick Smith has over 30 years’ experience working in the investment areas of leading insurance companies and providing consulting services to them. He is a proven leader, with a successful track record of leading investment middle and back offices through transformation change. He has successfully led many financial/investment technology initiatives.
Rick is a strategic thinker that is adept at leveraging technology in order to meet a variety of strategic business needs. Specific initiatives include implementing vendor developed software packages across a wide variety of asset classes, overseeing the development of investment Data Warehouses and Date Marts, converting portfolios acquired by insurers via mergers and developing general ledger or other system feeds.
Previously, Rick held investment controllership roles at Athene, Liberty Mutual Insurance, Nationwide Insurance, Jefferson Pilot (now part of Lincoln Financial Group) and ReliaStar Financial (now part of Voya).
Rick earned a Master of Business Administration in Finance from University Of North Carolina Greensboro as well as a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from Metropolitan State University.
Legacy compliance programs are struggling to keep up in today’s fast changing environment, and recent studies show compliance teams are stretched to their capacity limits. Unfortunately for most teams, there is no reinforcement coming. Luckily, modern technology is available to help streamline procedures and build efficient compliance programs.
In this blog, we will explore how modern technology can help investment compliance monitoring. With the right tools, organizations can thrive in even the most tumultuous markets.
How could technology help your organization? Talk to an expert to learn how the Clearwater solution can help you meet your compliance requirements.
Automate Monitoring
As portfolios continue to grow more complex, it can be challenging to aggregate all relevant rules and requirements, let alone the reconciled data on your portfolios, to evaluate. Having a system in place to aggregate and reconcile all your investment data daily and use it to automate investment monitoring can save teams valuable time and resources, while reducing the potential for human error.
Modern technology can make compliance a breeze by automatically notifying users of any violations in their portfolio within a day. Notifications can even inform users about credit events, portfolio level gain/loss target tracking, and regulatory requirements outside of your investment policy. With the right software, you can gain easy access to all relevant compliance data from a single comprehensive dashboard and even build customized reports to investigate and gain further insight into your compliance status with just a few clicks.
Provide Peace of Mind About Data
Technology can provide peace of mind by automatically aggregating and validating data on a regular, even daily, basis. Businesses can rely on thoroughly tested software to ensure high-quality portfolio data and compliance information.
In addition, regularly reviewed and challenged third-party data provides independent evaluation and can be combined with data specific to your organization in one system to ensure consistent, accurate compliance monitoring.
Give Accurate and Up-To-Date Compliance Status
These days, it is not good enough to be working with data that is several weeks behind. When asked for current compliance status, teams need to be prepared with an answer.
Gaining access to the most accurate and up-to-date information is not as difficult as it was in the past. Automated software can update compliance information daily to ensure users have the answers to any questions about current compliance status. Instead of waiting weeks for the team to compile data and run reports, leaders can now gain instant access to the reports they need for their next board meeting.
Automated monitoring provides more immediate identification of potential violations to policy, giving compliance teams more time to investigate and review violations prior to periodic reporting. This allows them to correct issues causing a false violation or document reasoning for a known/accepted violation as needed.
Provide Power to the User
Technology gives users the power to unlock the potential of their data with custom reports, notifications, and more. By automating many of the manual compliance processes, users can align their technology to match their business needs.
Additionally, customizable compliance solutions can be configured so each member of the team has access to the unique tools they need in their day-to-day work. When used properly, software solutions provide unmatched capabilities for compliance monitoring and reporting.
Software systems can also offer functionality that allows compliance teams to insert and maintain their own resolutions, notes, and documentation. These systems can offer full audit support, and even update aspects of compliance monitoring within days of a policy update to allow for increased agility and control.
Meet Regulatory Requirements
Regulatory requirements are constantly shifting, but technology can help keep track of any relevant information. Automated regulatory tracking can ensure that the portfolio is kept compliant, no matter what changes occur.
Implementing a solution to keep track of regulatory requirements can save your business valuable time and resources. Updates to guidance can be seamlessly integrated into your reports, without any disruption to your workflow.
Clearwater for Compliance Monitoring
With Clearwater, clients have access to the information they need for better portfolio analysis and monitoring. Clearwater provides actionable, up-to-date post-trade compliance daily. The compliance module is fully integrated with your accounting book of record data and can track any data point on the Clearwater system across multiple accounts, managers, or business units.
As a result of Clearwater’s services, clients have access to the most relevant and timely information regarding their regulatory requirements. Clearwater delivers insightful risk analytics on-demand to ensure investment teams have access to the most accurate and timely portfolio information.
Ready to get started? Schedule a demo today to see the impact Clearwater can make on your compliance program.