SunGard's Protegent Personal Trading Assistant (PTA) has been enhanced to include support for the new SEC-mandated pay-to-play requirement for tracking political contributions.
The SEC has issued the new rule to prevent pay-to-play practices by investment advisers. Protegent PTA provides firms with a holistic view of an employee's interactions with compliance responsibilities, including end-to-end personal trading surveillance, outside activity and conflict of interest reporting, as well as certification and attestation of requirements defined by regulatory organizations and internal policies.
Developed with input from SunGard's Protegent customer base, Protegent PTA helps compliance and legal officers create forms on demand, or by using the best practice templates with automated thresholding and analysis capabilities, as guidance in building out internal policies. In-line workflow helps employees acknowledge and confirm the actual contribution details for a complete record of the transaction. Integrated reports track details of political contributions based on jurisdiction, employee locale, candidate, party and political action committees. Creating proactive alerts via the compliance dashboard, Protegent PTA helps compliance take appropriate action and protect the firm's greater interests. For suspicious activity or overdue reporting, Protegent's case management functionality creates a portal for online, documented review and consolidation of activity.
Manoj Pombra, chief compliance officer of Matthews International Capital Management, said, "As a participant of SunGard's Protegent user-group meetings, I provided input to enhance the current SunGard product to comply with the requirements of the new pay-to-play rule. These enhancements, coupled with the current personal trading solution, can help our firm meet the compliance requirements of this new regulation."
Steve Sabin, chief operating officer of SunGard's Protegent business unit, said, "Protegent PTA is used by leading financial services firms to administer and automate the employee facing component of a firm's compliance program. This includes tracking ckcking political contributions in line with pay-to-play guidelines and outside activity interests. "