SunGard announced today the availability of Protegent Surveillance, a solution that combines capabilities of SunGard's Protegent BrokerAudit and Synapse Surveillance products into one comprehensive compliance and surveillance solution for financial services institutions.
The first version of Protegent Surveillance is now in production at several customer sites with additional implementations scheduled over the next few months.
The first version of Protegent Surveillance includes trade review capabilities for reviewing client profiles, transactions and accounts to help provide transaction review and account monitoring for suitability-based, ethical and quality of practice analysis.
"Protegent Surveillance was designed to help compliance officers meet the increasing challenges of time- and labor-intensive trade review processes, as well as to communicate effectively with supervisors and reps in the field," said Paul Erickson, president of SunGard's Protegent business. "Protegent Surveillance helps to provide information across the organization, placing information into the hands of people that can help affect change and solve problems before they become serious. We are encouraged by the successful roll-out of Protegent Surveillance, and look forward to subsequent enhancements throughout the year."
SunGard will release the next version of Protegent Surveillance in the second quarter of 2006, which will add modules for consolidated client data auditing, account risk ranking, and anti-money laundering exception management for detecting "red flag" conditions against criteria developed by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD).
Protegent Surveillance is designed to help brokerages, banks and insurance companies analyze the quality of supervision and practice, verify client suitability, identify questionable transactions and positions, support field audits, and respond quickly to both regulatory and legislative challenges. Protegent Surveillance provides financial services institutions with enhanced technical flexibility, platform independence, scalability and processing speed.
SunGard will continue to offer the Synapse Workbench for customers that want to define their own rules without the need for technical expertise.
Separately, SunGard announced today that Pacific Select Group (PSG), a wholly owned subsidiary of Pacific Life Insurance Company, has chosen SunGard's Protegent Surveillance brokerage compliance solution. PSG will roll out Protegent Surveillance as part of its AdvisorConnect integrated suite to independent firms within PSG's broker/dealer network to assist the firms and their registered representatives (reps) with determining suitability of investments for their clients, analyzing the quality of supervision and practice, and responding quickly to regulatory and legislative requirements.
Mike Graham, vice president of technology at PSG, said, "Protegent Surveillance is one of the most comprehensive compliance solutions available. It will provide our broker/dealers with a more efficient, cost-effective way to automate and accelerate review of trades in the field. Not only will Protegent Surveillance help to expedite trading for reps, it will provide efficiencies for our broker/dealers’ home offices and compliance officers."
PSG's independent broker/dealers will use Protegent Surveillance as their primary tool for determining suitability and providing surveillance. By integrating with PSG's AdvisorConnect platform to perform pre- and post-trade review, Protegent Surveillance will give compliance staff the ability to automatically identify exceptions. Protegent Surveillance will augment AdvisorConnect's automated trading process, providing reps with the ability to open a brokerage account and enter trades online, conduct trades more efficiently, and provide more comprehensive service to their clients.
"Automating suitability with both pre- and post-trade reviews is becoming more and more critical for firms needing to control and reduce risk," said Paul Erickson, president of SunGard’s Protegent solutions. "PSG is among the leaders in extending Protegent Surveillance capabilities to its broker/dealer network as a value-added service and in utilizing compliance and surveillance solutions to enhance its competitive advantage."