Source: Iconium Limited
Iconium Limited, the leading UK developer of next generation policy compliance document management solutions, today announced that IIB Bank, who provide a wide range of business and personal financial services to large, small and medium-sized Irish businesses, has purchased its second edition MiFID Policy Library.
Established in 1973 and part of the major European Bank, the KBC Group, IIB Bank is one the leading providers of financial services in Ireland. The bank depends on Policy Manager to dramatically improve process awareness amongst its users, and to deliver key policy and process management and "real-time" compliance reporting capabilities. The addition of Iconium's MiFID Policy Library to Policy Manager is giving the bank the confidence that it can meet the compliance deadline of November 1, 2007.
Ensuring employee awareness, understanding and compliance with the MiFID and Basel II regulations is a top priority for the bank. Its previous manual process affected its ability to communicate and report on important procedures, publish revisions and easily identify if policies had been updated, or even read. The resulting high communication follow-up costs and a loss of productivity led the bank to reassess its policy compliance document management strategy.
The bank recently deployed Policy Manager, a best-in-class governance framework that allows organisations to define, implement, monitor and report on compliance programmes in real-time, irrespective of type (Anti Money Laundering, Market Abuse, Information Security etc). It then simply added Iconium's second edition MiFID Library, a plug-in module, which contains Level 2 requirements (with Level 3 updates), suggested policies, action items and FAQ. As Policy Manager enables easy import of internal policies and procedures, the bank is further able to minimise its own operational and legal risk by ensuring compliance with key external regulatory standards and guidelines.
"In today's banking environment, it's essential that we ensure compliance with legal requirements and our own procedures, by putting in place the best possible solutions for the authoring, publishing and use of policies. Iconium's Policy Manager gave us the perfect platform to standardise how we create, manage, control and audit compliance related documents that we can distribute to employees by their job function and track understanding and acceptance in real time" said Damian O'Neill Head of Regulatory, Risk and Compliance. "The ease with which we were able to add their MiFID Library has greatly expedited our MiFID project and given us the confidence that we will meet the regulatory deadline. The content and the structure of the library helps us to easily link its suggested policy wordings to the legal requirements and follow to-do action items" he continued.
The use of Policy Manager is particularly beneficial due to the requirement of the bank to adapt procedures to local requirements and to meet local regulators auditing rules. "To achieve sustainable compliance adoption it can't be the completion of a series of 'ticks in boxes', but a fundamental commitment to implementation" continued O'Neill.
The bank will continue to explore how Policy Manager can be deployed for additional key operational areas in the future.
"We are extremely pleased to make this announcement as it recognises the need for businesses to find a cost-effective framework solution for their entire compliance and governance management process," said Nigel Kilpatrick, Sales and Marketing Director, Iconium Limited. "In addition, IIB Bank giving credibility to our MiFID Library has endorsed our belief that the pending regulatory deadline can be met with ease, emphasising that our customers can have sustainable compliance. We look forward to a long and successful working relationship with IIB Bank"