The new offering helps risk and compliance professionals at broker-dealers, investment advisors and hedge funds better understand and evaluate compliance, operational and other risk across their entire organization.

As risk continues to be a major concern for the securities market, business leaders are looking for data, insight and tools to effectively manage risk across their organizations. That's according to a recent Wolters Kluwer Financial Services survey of professionals working at broker-dealers, investment advisors, hedge funds and other types of securities firms. More than 80 percent of the survey's 184 respondents, which mainly held roles within compliance, legal or operations departments, rated their level of concern as a 7 or higher on a 10-point scale. However, only 55 percent expressed satisfaction with the solutions they currently use to manage risk. Respondents expressed a need for better understanding and automating the management of risk to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services is helping address this need through its ARC Logics for Financial Services solution, which helps organizations to efficiently manage compliance risk, operational risk and internal audit. The platform combines ERM technology with the regulatory content and compliance expertise of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services. It provides direct integration with the company's Compliance Resource Network, which consolidates securities laws, regulations and commentary, and its Policies and Procedures solution, a system that monitors regulatory changes and helps build and maintain a firm's compliance manuals.

ARC Logics for Financial Services provides a common collaborative platform to monitor, measure and manage compliance and operational risk across all business lines and legal entities, and across multiple risk disciplines. This allows a coordinated approach for completing risk assessments, reporting risk incidents and issues, providing control attestation, and producing appropriate reports for regulators, board members, executive management and shareholders. With ARC Logics for Financial Services, organizations are better able to fulfill immediate enterprise risk management objectives in a targeted, cost-effective manner while concurrently building a holistic, enterprise wide program.

"Meeting heightened risk management and compliance requirements, and preparing for regulatory changes, will be crucial priorities for securities and investment firms in 2011 and 2012," said Dushyant Shahrawat, senior research director at TowerGroup. "To meet these challenges, firms will look for software, and vendors, that seamlessly integrate these new specifications into core functionality. Incorporating new compliance and regulatory requirements into enterprise-wide risk management systems is a perfect example of what firms will be looking for going forward".

"We have blended sophisticated technology with industry-proven compliance content and expertise to provide a complete risk management solution," said Todd Cooper, vice president and general manager of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services' Enterprise Risk Compliance business. "ARC Logics for Financial Services helps securities firms gain greater visibility into the key risks facing their organization and the efforts that are currently underway to resolve and prevent issues, while allowing them to archive all of this information for regulatory exam purposes, investor relations, board reporting, and maximum impact of investments. In short, we help our customers best take advantage of the dynamic tension between risk and opportunity."

ARC Logics for Financial Services is complemented by the company's Compliance eLearning Solutions and consultancy offerings.