Personal Trading

Save time and money. Protect your firm against employee trading conflicts.

  • Automatically approve trade pre-clearances

  • Maintain restricted lists and watch lists

  • Receive brokerage statements electronically

  • Automatically review brokerage statements

  • Monitor for front running

Automatically approve trade pre-clearances
Employee trade requests are automatically pre-cleared according to business rules that you configure. If the trade request does not comply with the business rules, it can be automatically denied or routed for manual review.

Maintain restricted lists and watch lists
Multiple Restricted Lists (viewable by employees) and a Watch Lists (private and confidential) can be setup for different groups of people. Access to edit these lists can be limited to a select group of people.

Receive brokerage statements electronically
Brokerage statements can be received electronically directly from the brokerages. No IT involvement is necessary. 1-2 weeks after you complete the paperwork, data begins to flow into the system.

Automatically review brokerage statements
Brokerage statements can be automatically reviewed according to business rules that you configure. When a rule is broken, an exception is created for review by Compliance. An audit trail of exceptions is kept for auditors.

Monitor for front running
Firm trades can be imported from your order management system. Confirms that are in conflict can create exceptions to be investigated.

Save time and money. Protect your firm against employee trading conflicts.
  • Pre-clearances

  • Restricted Lists

  • Electronic Statements

  • Statement Review

  • Front Running

Personal Trading Compliance Software FAQs

How does an electronic pre-clearance work?

An employee logs into the system and completes a short form. If you use auto approval and no business rules are broken, the employee receives immediate notification that the trade was approved. If you use manual approval or business rules are broken, the approver receives email notification of the trade request. Upon approval or denial, the employee receives email notification.

Does your system have a security master?

Yes.

Do I have to pay extra for the security master?

No.

What exchanges does your security master support?

120 stock exchanges in 90 countries.

What if I do not require trade pre-clearance?

You can still use the system to automatically review brokerage statements. Checking statements against restricted lists, client trades, holding periods, etc. takes seconds instead of hours.

How does automated brokerage statement review work?

When brokerage statements arrive via electronic brokerage feed or are manually entered, the system checks them against customer configured business rules. For each rule that is broken, a personal trading exception is created and assigned to Compliance. Compliance investigates the exception, resolves it and marks it closed. A complete audit trail is maintained for auditors.

Can I customize my business rules?

Yes. You configure which business rules you want to check. If you have a business rule that Compliance11 does not support yet, Compliance11 works with you to add the business rule to the system for all customers to use at no charge to you.

Can different employees have different business rules?

Yes. You can define as many groups of employees as you like. Each group can have its own business rules.

Can I have multiple restricted lists?

Yes. You can define as many groups of employees as you like. Each group can have its own restricted list.

What do I have to do to setup an electronic brokerage feed?

You complete paperwork authorizing the feed. 1-2 weeks later data starts showing up in the system. No involvement from your IT department is necessary. (Certain brokerages are more involved and require more time.)

Which brokerage firms do you support?

Data feeds can be provided for any brokerage that can deliver data electronically.

What if I cannot limit which brokerages my employees trade at?

Firms that cannot limit the brokerages their employees trade at typically get brokerage feeds for the large brokerages. For other brokerages, they either (1) have employees enter their transactions as part of their monthly transaction confirmation, or (2) have an admin enter the transactions from the paper brokerage statement. Entering the statement by hand is typically faster than doing a manual statement review.

How many electronic brokerage feeds to customers typically have?

1-5. There are diminishing returns at some point.

Can I upload client transactions from my order management system?

Yes. Once uploaded, the transactions can be checked during trade pre-clearance and can be used to create the Front Running Report.

Can I automate my quarterly transactions and holdings submission?

Yes. The system supports periodic employee entry of transaction and holdings data. However, most firms that get electronic brokerage feeds do not use this feature.

Think Equity LLC

Firm

Think Equity LLC, a broker dealer / wealth management firm with multiple offices

Problem

The firm pre-clears 500 personal trades a month by email. When each email came in, Compliance did a series of manual checks including a restricted list check. Periodically Compliance manually reconciled the pre-clearances with the employees' statements and followed up on exceptions. This work required almost an entire fulltime person.

Solution

The RIA implemented Compliance11's Personal Trading product using the auto-approve feature. Now employees receive instantaneous approval or denial of trade requests. Pre-clearances and confirms are reconciled automatically, and exceptions are logged automatically.

Result

Thanks to the automated solution, the CCO was able to cancel a hiring request and is now viewed as a hero in the organization.

Customer Experience

"The Compliance Team at ThinkEquity has been very happy to partner with Compliance11 in the development and rollout of its product offerings. Rarely have we partnered with a vendor who has such a strong understanding of the ethical imperatives of our business, and of the work that is necessary to survey the daily activities of our firm. Because of their web-based tools, we have reduced the hours necessary each day to review employee personal activities, streamlined our various employee attestations and have rolled out other processes that help throughout the firm. This has allowed us to make the team much more efficient. The result - no new hires! But best of all, the Compliance11 team is very responsive, provides outstanding customer service and is always ready to hear suggestions. It's almost like having a development team of your very own!"
Harriet Bitt, CCO

Cowen and Company

Firm

Cowen and Company, a broker with multiple offices in the US, Europe and Asia

Problem

The Compliance department was looking for an employee personal trading solution. The current solution was email based and utilized an antiquated database. The Chief Compliance Officer was concerned that his staff was spending too much time sorting through paper and email. He felt that his staff should instead focus on high value analysis. The vendors that were looked at required complex implementations or significant customizations. The Chief Compliance Officer did not think that his staff had enough spare time to launch a major systems implementation project.

Solution

Cowen and Company chose Compliance11's Personal Trading product primarily because it was looking for a partner, not just a vendor. Compliance11's VP of Customer Service worked with Cowen's Compliance staff to implement the product, configure the business rules and implement the brokerage feeds. The intuitive nature of the interface allowed for a speedy implementation that was not burdensome on the compliance staff.

Result

Cowen and Company was able to maintain and improve it supervisory capability while significantly reducing its clerical effort and compliance spend.

Customer Experience

"Our Board of Directors and senior management ask from time to time whether recent market developments and the Firm's responses have impaired the ability of the Legal and Compliance Department to ensure appropriate internal controls are in place. I have been able to answer "No" because we have taken a number of steps to mitigate the situation. One such step is to increase our reliance on systems solutions and technological tools, including our recent implementation of Compliance11 to automate personal trading, affirmations, disclosures and general supervision. This product allowed us to focus on critical surveillance and advisory issues, improve our overall work flow and enhance our ability to respond to client needs, while at the same time, reducing our compliance spend."
Mark Egert, CCO

RMB Capital Management

Firm

RMB Capital Management, a wealth management firm in Chicago, IL

Problem

The Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) utilized an associate to match trade requests against the restricted list, reconcile confirms to employees trade requests and manage the creation of the quarterly holdings report. Budget cuts and changing firm priorities caused the associate to be transferred to another department. The CCO was left to deal with a pile of un-reconciled confirms and a process in need of administration. With several IT projects in flight, the CCO was left with minimal IT support.

Solution

The firm decided to implement Compliance11's personal trading product. Since Compliance11's products are delivered via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), IT was not required to assist in the implementation. The product automated the pre-clearance of trade requests, the reconciliation of the brokerage confirms and the reporting of employee quarterly holdings.

Result

The CCO was now able to perform her additional duties without the need for an extra headcount.

Customer Experience

"We used to spend hundreds of hours downloading and printing employee statements/Compliance11's employee trading product has saved us an incredible amount of time. Employees have embraced the instant acknowledgement that their trade has been approved."
Jennifer Rydwelski, CCO

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