Following a period of joint development, the new technology has been launched specifically to meet the compliance and regulatory needs of the wealth management community.

Fully integrated into tercero, Third Financial Software's wealth management platform, the technology provides wealth managers with a unique solution for compliance, risk and portfolio monitoring. The new module, tercero Alerts is already being implemented at Third Financial Software's early adopters and advisory clients.

"The increased demand for transparency and greater scrutiny from investors, internal management and external regulatory bodies has placed pressure on asset managers to improve their compliance controls," says Stewart Foster, director and founder, Third Financial Software. "Using rules-based technology, tercero Alerts identifies, and automatically reacts to breaches. Rules are completely user driven and can be set to monitor investment restrictions, risk exposures, trading breaches and virtually any other user defined rules. It is particularly strong on controls demanded by regulatory bodies."

The integrated solution also aims to address calls for wealth managers to prove they are accurately monitoring client investment rules and employing sound compliance and risk practices. Through a set of revolutionary graphical 'gadgets' on the desktop, compliance officers, executives and managers are provided with tools to monitor risk, positions, portfolios, trades and allocations. Risk and compliance policies, which traditionally have been monitored manually, are turned into more reliable, automated processes through:

• Alert rule-definitions - tailored to the individual client.
• The proactive monitoring of prices, movements, trades, positions and restrictions -and graphical alerts of real-time compliance breaches.
• Historical data recorded for compliance reviews and reports.
• Integration of the alerts into portfolio management, risk analytics, client reporting and InvInvestor Relationship Management (IRM) functions.

Gary Linieres, director and co-founder, Third Financial Software stated: "We have created a unique solution for the wealth management community to help meet the challenges of complying with external regulators and the demands of an ever more discerning and savvy investor base. We expect the automation and increased reliability that tercero Alerts bring to the risk monitoring process will benefit wealth managers - particularly as they look to have more control over these functions in order to better service, retain and gain customers."

tercero Alerts can monitor complex rules and restrictions without having to access the underlying application. Desktop alerts proactively highlight when rules are broken and a click of the mouse directs the manager to the specific breach within the system so it can be dealt with. All breaches are logged in the tercero IRM platform so that a full record of the event is captured and can be used to demonstrate a professional and diligent process to all external and internal bodies.