Silicon Valley, CA based financial technology firm La Meer Inc (www.lameerinc.com) has launched a solution for the SEC’s Regulation Best Interest for Wealth Management.  Regulation Best Interest covers the entire broker-dealer and registered investment advisor market in the United States and obliges any advisor or dealer to act in the best interest of their client while disclosing conflicts of interest and financial incentives.  

La Meer’s GRACE for Regulation Best Interest

La Meer’s GRACE platform is a cloud-based, web, tablet and mobile-enabled platform, and for the Regulation Best Interest is unique in that it comprehensively covers all of the requirements of the four obligations of the regulation in an integrated but modular way.  Featuring a client management portal, a compliance portal and a client portal, advisors and associated persons can interact with clients, exchanging information, approvals and portfolio information in real time and with the compliance department for suitability reviews. The powerful dashboards offered in each portal enables quick and easy visualization of information. When it comes to examinations firms will have a “single source of truth” to make examinations painless, and can help to demonstrate that the company really does what it needs to. 

Being cloud-based, web, tablet and mobile-ready, GRACE enables everyone to work from whereever they are and at whatever time to ensure clients are managed in compliance, efficiently and effectively.

The modular nature of the GRACE platform allows firms to implement (and pay for) only the modules or functionality to address the particular area of immediate need and add other modules as they need them without additional vendors or integration costs. GRACE can also integrate easily with existing systems and data sources.

GRACE’s Client Management Portal enables associated persons and client management staff have an easy to use way to:

• Gather client information and generate the client risk profile from easy to use risk assessment questionnaires and risk score the client;
• Perform product selection and portfolio creation in the client’s best interest from curated data, and offer alternate recommendations, record selection notes, and share them with clients and compliance for suitability;
• Share disclosures and marketing material with clients through email and via the client portal;
• Keep notes of all client interactions with the client and within the firm.

GRACE’s Compliance Management Portal establishes the oversight processes for the firm with functions for:

• Defining and managing policies and procedures to reflect all the expectations;
• Online attestation for all associated persons through configurable templates;
• Online training to staff and associated persons with ability to include custom training for the new processes in the organization;
• Conduct product and model portfolio governance to verify that all products being offered by the firm and their risk characteristics match and reflect the clients’ risk profiles and model portfolios. The curated information can be offered to client management staff for easy use in their portfolio creation function. This function also allows continuous oversight on the products based on client usage and changes in risk characteristics over time;
• Create and manage Client Risk Assessment Questionnaires for various client types and provide it to the Client Management staff on their portal for easy use;
• Manage Conflicts of Interest Repositories and their reporting to clients by offers an efficient way to identify, record and manage, mitigate and/or disclose appropriate conflicts to clients that may be impacted by those conflicts;
• Manage and Share Disclosure documents after internally review with associated persons for easy access to share with their clients. Proof of client receipt and acknowledgement from clients can be kept track of to ensure compliance;
• Conduct suitability review of products and portfolios created by associated. Clients and compliance can review and record their review notes leading to higher transparency. This data can used for ongoing review for violations and corrective action and be available for examinations;
• Periodic portfolio reviews should be conducted to ensure that the portfolios that were created and signed off with clients are indeed being adhered to for trading, and any new products and portfolio risks that arise over periods of time are monitored;
• Online forms for associated persons to request pre-trade approval and report gifts, political contributions, outside activity reporting, U4, U5 reporting, associated person registrations along with their review process allows monitoring of their activities;
• Personal trade monitoring, client trade allocation, trade monitoring, fees and billing monitoring ensures oversight;
• Client complaints can to be recorded, managed and addressed early and effectively.

GRACE’s Client Portal offers clients functionality to work with associated persons and the firm:

• To define their goals, objectives and preferences;
• Receive their product and portfolio recommendations and approve or disapprove of the selections made on their behalf;
• Receive and acknowledge disclosures;
• See their ongoing portfolio, trades, fees and billing;
• Record any complaints that they may have.

To learn more about our GRACE Reg BI visit  https://lameerinc.com/grace-client-management/ or write to us at info@lameerinc.com

About La Meer Inc.

La Meer Inc., founded in 2010, is a Silicon Valley firm that offers the GRACE Suite of products to addresses a variety of aspects of risk management, from operational risk, compliance management, client management, Trade Monitoring, AML, and IT Risk, Vendor risk  and Operational due diligence to address world-wide regulations.  Today La Meer is present in the US, Canada, UK and the EU, servicing clients throughout North America and Europe.