Financial Compliance and Regulatory
We provide valuable input and offer proactive and practical compliance solutions and recommendations to brokerage houses, fintech firms, insurance companies and all spectrum of asset management companies, including private equity firms, hedge funds, independent financial advisors helping them for meeting complex compliance obligations under local regulatory compliance requirements.
Combining our team of communications and business professionals, we assist our clients in managing its resources and expertise to be assigned to meet company goals, objectives and regulatory compliance, and to ensure that regulatory strategies meet current and future customer needs, and to provide ongoing coaching and feedback to develop your compliance team. We can act as your strategic partner on all technical and other operational matters related to regulatory affairs matters, and to provide strategic planning and analysis to satisfy current and potential customer needs, and to facilitate communications between all stakeholders in respect of all regulatory communications.
Regulatory Licence Applications
Our compliance team understands the importance and complexity of license application for being licensed with regulators. We assist our clients and handles different licence applications, including SFC licences for 10 types of regulated activities in Hong Kong, Insurance Brokerage Businesses, Money Lenders and Fund Management Businesses in Singapore (MAS) and Australia (ASIC), Trust or Corporate Services Providers (TCSP) in Hong Kong, trading participant(s) application with HKEx, etc. Our services include:
- Compliance consultation during the application process;
- Provisions of advice for business plan and corporate structure and advice on the key areas that regulatory authorities take into consideration when granting licenses;
- Provision of advice for requirements for responsible/ key people and assisting the applicant with identifying qualified human capital;
- Preparation and handling of licensing application, including addressing all matters and queries raised by regulators during the application;
- Preparation of compliance policies and procedures for the purpose of application;
- Act as the main contact between regulators and clients; and
- Negotiation of licensing condition and notify regulators for all relevant changes, if any, during the application process.
Ongoing Compliance Services
Financial authorities continue to enhance the regulatory scrutiny to govern the financial institutions. Drawn from leading financial institutions, regulators and authorities, we guide our clients to develop, to assist and to implement their compliance programs that are in line with the regulatory requirements, and to ensure they obtain the best available information in relation to the increasingly complex compliance rules and regulations. We provide tailored advice and ongoing support to our clients seamlessly and ensuring the solutions are innovative and cost-effective. Our ongoing compliance supports include:
- Provisions of compliance consultation;
- Execution of regular site visit in preforming compliance testing;
- Provision of review and advice on the update of the compliance policies and procedures from time to time to match the up-to-date regulatory requirements;
- Facilitation of interactions with regulators;
- Preparation for the regulator reports from time to time;
- Provisions of requirements for licensing notification and fulfilment of other regulatory obligations; and
- Provisions of risk assessments of corporate operations.
Monthly Managed Packages
Monthly managed packages are our standardized compliance monthly services designed for meeting general compliance requirements for financial service providers. We adopt three tiers of monthly managed packages of which purposes are clearly indicated so that subscribers are certain about how to fulfil their own compliance needs. On the top of the chosen package, subscribers can add modules that are offered by us when regulatory issues are arisen or they can retain us for our fee-based retainer service. The following sets out the three packages:
Basic
Basic package is for the purpose of promoting compliance awareness and culture
- Regulatory circulars highlight
- Weekly regulatory news update summary
- Monthly Newsletter
- Access to one hours CPT webinar per month for topics relating to compliance awareness (including induction training, annual compliance training and annual mandatory AML training) and regulatory topics
- 20% discount in access to our online resources provided by GCC Academy
Standard
Standard package is for the purpose of promoting compliance awareness & culture and fulfilling compliance obligations
- Includes all the features of Basic
- Monthly compliance call with senior management
- Regulatory notification management
- Licensing application for individual
- Annual health check
- 20% fee-discount in our fee-based retainer services
Premium
Premium package is for the purpose of promoting compliance awareness & culture, fulfilling compliance obligations and supervising of compliance framework and functions
- Include all the features of Standard
- Compliance Policies and Procedure review
- Compliance framework setup
- Ongoing maintenance of regulatory inventory
- Compliance monitoring program setup
- Monthly onsite compliance review
Additional modules include Product Compliance, Conduct Compliance, Change Management, Matters relating to Anti-Money Laundering/ Know-Your-Clients, Sanction, and Market Misconduct, Marketing Compliance, Fund Advisory, Compliance Resources and Knowledge Management, Fintech/ Regtech Advisory, and Special Project.
In case of seeking tailor-made solutions, we also provide ongoing compliance consulting services, including fee-based retainer services, and tailor-made retainer services (with managed features and outsourced support).
Implementation of Compliance Framework
Developing a comprehensive and structured compliance framework with us will strengthen your company’s compliance culture in the long run.
A compliance framework is to organize compliance activities in a systematic approach to efficiently fulfil all the regulatory standard and mitigate the risk of non-compliance. We have the essential expertise in compliance to give you assistance in architecting, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating the compliance framework. Our support in the framework includes:
Forming the scope, structure and objectives of a robust compliance framework
Monitoring the establishment and execution of the framework
Executing the compliance manual, policies, procedures and programs
Assessing the effectiveness of the function, system and process
For more services:
The complex dynamics of banking and investment industry has continuously imposes governance and compliance challenges to business entities. Our consulting services solutions are designed to provide you with a better understanding with current and emerging regulatory environment as well as pragmatic solution which you can easily apply into your business. Our experienced team can assist directors and management on:
- Product Compliance
- Conduct Compliance
- Change Management
Our professionals, with extensive knowledge of corporate governance, offer timely and sincere advice on addressing the compliance, governance, and regulatory challenges by:
- Identification of the applicable laws and regulations;
- Evaluation of the existing compliance programs and procedures;
- Inspection and avoidance of violations of regulatory requirements;
- Consultation relating to new products; and
- Provision of advice and hands-on guidance on building compliance framework, implementing compliance systems, policies, etc
With our compliance specialist, it enables the corporate governance standards in your organization are adhered to regulatory requirement and not expose to potential risks and sanctions.
Know Your Customer (KYC) is an essential practice to protect financial institutions from fraud and losses resulting from money-laundering, illegal frauds and suspicious transactions. KYC is forming part of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) procedures and it refers to procedures the financial institutions adopt to establish customer identity and to understand the nature of customer’s business activities, in order to assess the money laundering risks associated with the customers. Leverage our specialists’ extensive experience in the financial institutions, our AML & KYC solutions assist our clients with:
- Provisions of review and advice on KYC/ AML policies and procedures;
- Update of KYC/ AML rules from time to time;
- Customer on-boarding process;
- Review on ongoing client’s customer account relationship;
- Evaluation of client’s independence AML oversight capability;
- Evaluation of the effectiveness, shortfalls, and high-risk areas of client’s existing AML approach; and
- Regular training on AML and KYC.
In addition, with the comprehensive knowledge of the potential risks of breaching sanction rules and market misconduct rules, for example, insiders dealing and false trading, We are your bespoke partner to protect your company from unwanted legal liabilities and sanctions. Specifically, our team provides your company with professional compliance consulting services, tailor-made compliance strategies and regular checks to ensure that your company is not involved in any financial crimes.
Our team offers comprehensive services on matters of marketing compliance, with the provision of professional advice and tailored reviews on marketing materials, for example, mass media posts, disclaimers, or presentation materials of your company. Our team is equipped with extensive consulting experience to identify potential compliance issues and provide accurate solution to the problem. We enable your company to have a cost-effective and efficient review process, ensuring that your marketing materials could be smoothly delivered in no time.
Our team has expertise acting for fund / asset managers in relation to setting up an appropriate fund vehicle. We specialise in:
- Provision for advices for fund setup and choice of jurisdictions;
- Establishment and promotion of private funds and fund documentation;
- Regulatory and compliance advice in respect of fund distribution and promotion;
- Fund formation and incorporation; and
- Licensing and distribution of products.
As we have come to an era of Fintech and Regtech, we provide comprehensive regulatory and compliance services to Fintech businesses. With extensive experience and practical working knowledge on Fintech business support, our team is dedicated to keeping up with the latest developments in the Fintech industry and offering the best assistance for your Fintech business throughout each and every development stage, including setup, operations and further expansion.
Compliance health check is believed to be a valuable part of the corporate governance framework. Our health check procedures are to ensure your business is meeting the essential compliance requirements and look for hidden dangers as well as providing appropriate support for improvements. By reviewing the compliance documents and procedures we will assess the status of governance obligation, identify deficiencies. Actionable recommendations for improvements will be offered by our team according to every individual health check results.
Conducting regular health check with us enable you to develop a robust internal control environment upon the compliance requirement and provide you confidence in your company’s regulatory compliance to move forward and continued success and growth.
Building a culture of compliance in your organization is crucial to minimize risk exposure. Our compliance resources support enables you to cultivate a culture that actively follows to internal and external regulations. Educational compliance resources are one of our core supports to provide regular continual compliance education by our compliance specialist to increase compliance awareness and update compliance knowledge, resources include:
- Micro learning;
- Webinar training for CPT purpose; and
- Regular industry insight and updates
We are also ready to customize compliance training solution for your company with most suitable and relevant learning material and classroom experience.
Moreover, our team has extensive experience in finding the right compliance resources for various partner companies. Equipped with strong professional networks, We are always ready to provide your company with channels to the best compliance resources, enabling your companies’ compliance matters to be outsourced cost-effectively, efficiently and safely.
The recent investment industry is increasingly varied, and complex, new laws and regulations are regularly instituted. We understand that each company may face different challenges and opportunities when addressing the regulatory changes with their distinctive compliance culture. Thereby, our team offer tailor-made solutions for your special projects, proactively support your business to deal with the market and regulatory changes, governance and compliance improvements, business operation transformation and market expansion. Our specialists are prepared to get along with you to cope with the challenges and explore the opportunities.
With our extensive knowledge about the market and the complex regulatory environment, we provide compliance training and a sophisticated knowledge hub that provides an open innovation approach for the purpose of bringing together clients with deep understanding of compliance knowledge, both online and offline, to ensure staff members stay alerted and informed about the regulatory changes.
Our trainings include:
- Facilitation, through in developing a comprehensive compliance management system for internal use;
- CPT Compliance training for management level and personnel who are interested in the field of compliance and regulation;
- AML and KYC training;
- Training in relation to preparation for regulatory inspection;
- Training for provisions of new product, new services or new business proposals from a regulatory perspective; and
- Ad hoc compliance training.
The GRC Knowledge Hub will employ an innovative approach to enable you to solve compliance matters within your organization. Regtech is becoming more and more popular and we trust that technology is the future solution for solving complex compliance environment. Our approach in acquiring knowledge is consisted of two steps, namely research and ideation, and open innovation.
Research and ideation is the process of requiring a collaboration of creative and open minds. We embrace disciplines and methods of design thinking and create unprecedented solutions.
Open innovation is at the core of the GRC Knowledge Hub. We bring together clients with Fintech/ Regtech start-ups, technology vendors, students and universities through hack-a-thons, app-a-thons, maker and meet-ups that will help you discover and explore new ideas and applicable solutions for your compliance problems.
