Chip Goes To Chicago: A Few Days At The SunGard Compliance Conference
Last week I attended the SunGard users conference. Held in Chicago it was a really good event. I say this because I also attended last year and did not get as much out of the event as I would have wished. Much of that likely was my own fault. But after spending time over the past couple of months really digging into Compliance Engines and Account On-Boarding, the SunGard Compliance conference was like being a kid in a candy store.
The conference opened with Lisa Roth. Lisa is the CEO of Keystone Captial Corporation, a broker dealer out of the west coast. Her time on the podium was a solid blend of facts, humor and insights. Perhaps her most interesting and accurate quip was, “now compliance is cool”. From there the conference dove into greater depth and success stories in areas such as Account On-Boarding, Surveillance, Trading Compliance, Best Practices and Data. A nice touch that the folks at SunGard included was the talk by Carla Romano of FINRA.
The sessions were largely positive. The topics were initially presented and Q&A allowed for marginal digging into richer question sets. The topics on future development were a bit vague, but that is understandable. The area where I saw a hole was in the area of data. And my focus is on direct business primarily. SunGard has a plethora of processes to bring clients on-board; dropping NIGO rates and improving core data. They have a rich library of Compliance rules. But in the area of data they continue to struggle in getting their arms around the multiple data needs for independent and insurance broker dealers. SunGard today forces clients to manage multiple downloads, reconciliation and management of the data that goes into their engines. Their upcoming integration of their Account On-Boarding piece into Protegent is a good effort to improve core client data. Rep data however is an issue for many in that the rep data elements need to be pulled from commission systems like Caesar and WinOps or manually imported or entered. And in speaking with clients on the issues of rep and transactional data, the feedback I got was that that missing data is the issue that holds many firms back from utilizing the SunGard systems to the maximum. That said, I believe that today SunGard provides the most comprehensive integrated engines in the On-Boarding and Surveillance field to independent and insurance broker dealers.
Giving up a few days to attend a conference is a commitment. And over the past few months I have been more critical of how I spend and have spent my time. Attending this SunGard event was time well spent.