Finance and services company FirstAssist
Group has used sophisticated software to accelerate a programme to
document its internal policies and procedures as it completes its
demerger from Royal and Sun Alliance.
The group, which was formed from a management
buy-out from RSA, manages financial products and other services for
banks and businesses.
It claims to have cut between three and five months
from a nine-month-long policy documentation project by installing
specialised compliance management software following the split with
its parent company.
FirstAssist plans to use thesystem, known as Rulesafe, as an audit tool to
demonstrate to financial regulators that the company and its staff
are complying with financial regulations and have a firm grip on
their operating procedures.
"We have got to be able to demonstrate our
procedures to external auditors," said IT operations manager Steve
Richards.
"Quite a lot of our business is regulated by the
Financial Services Authority. We see Rulesafe as a powerful tool to
give regulators and auditors confidence that we have control over
our procedures."
Following the demerger, FirstAssist began bringing
its policies and procedures - which were scattered across paper
manuals, an intranet and computer files - together into a central
database.
The project was essential, said Richards, so staff
could find the policies they needed for different clients easily
and quickly.
The Secoda-supplied RuleSafe software allows
FirstAssist to keep an audit trail showing which staff have read
and understood policies, providing powerful evidence for regulators
and auditors.
"We have the capability to go around to an
individual and ask them why they have not read a policy," said
Richards.
"You need to have 100% of your staff aware of
certain policies. We are confident that, should an auditor walk up
to a member of staff, the employee knows where to find a policy,
and has read it."
The software, which runs on a Windows server, allows
staff to identify the policies they need for their work from the
hundreds stored on the central database.
First Assist originally planned to store the
documentation on its intranet, but changed tack after seeing a
demonstration of the Rulesafe software, which is currently going
through final acceptance testing.
"I think it saved us months off a programme that
would have taken between nine months and a year. I suspect it
possibly halved the programme time," said Richards.