Mortgage technology provider Trigold is launching an online system designed to provide directly authorised principals with a compliance tool for monitoring the activities of their appointed representatives (AR).
Originally designed and developed in 2001, in accordance with the proposed monitoring obligations of lenders under CP98, the Compliance Shield system, was never launched and had been mothballed until the parameters of statutory regulation became apparent.
The system has now been altered to allow compliance officers to remotely check on the activities of brokers without the need to physically check their operating practices.
Ben Cooper, spokesman at Trigold, said: ‘It will provide a cost effective solution to compliance. It can capture all the compliance documentation from the client sales process such as key facts and initial disclosure documents, date stamp it and send a copy to an online warehouse. From here the compliance officer can monitor that brokers are compliant without visiting them and without making any changes to the sales process.’
Trigold claim that the system is intuitive and will be able to tell high-risk products, but can also be tailored to meet the needs of individual firms.
Commenting, Mark Mountney, managing director of Premier Mortgage Management (PMM), said: ‘I have a sceptical approach to compliance offerings that bolt onto the back of sourcing technology. It is critical that things like the ‘reasons why letters’ are ‘bombproof’ in terms of compliance, and my team use a standalone system we have devised ourselves.
‘However, if this has been developed to meet the minimum requirements of the FSA I would be happy to have a look at it. Most brokers in the field are operating a long way from their base and are increasingly turning to the internet to keep in touch anyway.’
