Cryptocurrencies

While bitcoin is the most salient and top of mind in the Financial Technology (FinTech) world, many altcoins have emerged as more specific and affordable options, especially in the USA and the UK. Many others have made decisions against digital currency, for reasons ranging from ignorance to ambiguity to protectionism of national currency. Crypto currencies are basically peer-to-peer digital currencies that use cryptography as lead security system. The laws about crypto currency are in a grey area across most parts of the world including India. Since it's a P2P currency, it is impossible to regulate a population using bitcoin as currency and the logistics to monitor a mass population is almost impossible. At the moment there's no verdict on the legality of virtual currency in India.

Outsourced Compliance Monitoring and Reporting Services

BFSI organizations across the world are facing the challenges of tighter regulation and having to deal with disparate information systems. Outsourced services of Archis Business Solutions Pvt Ltd can help you streamline business and statutory reporting processes and enable inter operable data communication. From Capital Adequacy Reporting to Credit Management, from MIS to Risk Management, and key internal processes such as loan and credit management can significantly save on time and costs with outsourcing of these services to established domain experts in this field. 

Archis Services for Compliance Monitoring and Reporting

With modification in existing regulations and addition of new ones, financial institutions are faced with a host of challenges in keeping abreast of these changes. There is an immediate need of putting in place an effective and dynamic compliance framework that is responsive to market and regulatory development. Archis Business Solutions’ Compliance and Regulatory team provides expert assistance on regulations and compliance and provides a comprehensive compliance framework to customers.

For companies to stay relevant, process and system enhancements are required to cope with the increasing demands. We ensure accuracy and punctual information transfer to assist our customer in staying relevant. With Archis’ services, companies can roll out innovative products without being tied down by regulatory implications or disclosure requirements.

Our Compliance and Regulatory team is comprised of technicians and professionals with 30+ years of broad ranging experience of providing effective solutions to financial institutions. Leveraging on our insightful knowledge and deep understanding of the regulatory requirements within the financial services industry, we are able to assist you in understanding and responding to increased challenges that banks and other financial institutions face in the regulatory regime.

COMPLIANCE MONITORING AND REPORTING

Compliance laws, rules and standards generally cover matters such as observing proper standards of market conduct, managing conflicts of interest, treating customers fairly, and ensuring the suitability of customer advice. They typically include specific areas such as the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, and may extend to tax laws that are relevant to the structuring of banking products or customer advice.

The expression “compliance risk” is the risk of legal or regulatory sanctions, material financial loss, or loss to reputation a bank may suffer as a result of its failure to comply with laws, regulations, rules, related self-regulatory organization standards, and codes of conduct applicable to its banking activities (together, “compliance laws, rules and standards”).

A bank that knowingly participates in transactions intended to be used by customers to avoid regulatory or financial reporting requirements, evade tax liabilities or facilitate illegal conduct will be exposing itself to significant compliance risk.

Compliance laws, rules and standards have various sources, including primary legislation, rules and standards issued by legislators and supervisors, market conventions, codes of practice promoted by industry associations, and internal codes of conduct applicable to the staff members of the bank. For the reasons mentioned above, these are likely to go beyond what is legally binding and embrace broader standards of integrity and ethical conduct.

It is in such a scenario that outsourced services of Compliance Monitoring & Reporting by companies such as Archis Business Solutions Pvt Ltd gain significance. While theoretically compliance should be part of the culture of the organization and not just the responsibility of specialist compliance vendor or staff, nevertheless, a bank will be able to manage its compliance risk more effectively if it outsources the compliance function to a specialist organization where the required structures are in place and the processes are fine-tuned over time with the “compliance function principles”. Apart from the obvious saving on manpower & training costs, with properly documented division of responsibilities, the inherent risks are almost completely mitigated!

Make In India – Leveraging Human Capital to Prosper in a VUCA World – Bridging the gap

Current Initiatives

While the 2015 Ernst & Young report on the subject highlighted that institutions such as ITIs are unable to meet the industry requirements of skilled manpower and outsourcing, leading to an increased reliance on the private and diploma institutions, the stated reasons for this preference being gap in technical curriculum as per the industry needs, lack of exposure of the teaching faculty to the changes in technology and up-gradation of infrastructure at ITI’s, the government has stepped in to amend the Apprenticeship Act as a start to addressing these pain points by:-

·        Dismantling of trade-wise and unit-wise prescribed numbers

·        Setting the minimum and maximum limits on number of apprentices to be engaged

·        Linking of the stipend to minimum wages for apprentices

·        Inclusion of all undergraduate, postgraduate and other approved vocational courses

·        Revision of curriculum of apprenticeship courses to align to industry requirements

·       Focus on bringing self-regulation and monitoring in the industry rather than enforcement by state through penal measures

·         Online portal for bringing in speed and transparency in approvals

Developing a competency-wage grid

A lack of commonly accepted standards which define the required levels of competencyfor an individual, and correlates the same to an ideal wage was another key challenge, that is being addressed by  development of the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF). NSQF lays down the competency framework and standards with respect to levels of competency for many trades in the industry, by

·   Creation of National Occupational Standards (NOS) for various job roles by sector skill councils (SSC).

·    Establishment of 10 competency levels thereby enabling vertical mobility in terms of skill levels.

·       Inclusion of competency levels that can be acquired by educationally disadvantaged/ school dropouts, 10th/12th pass-outs thereby, enabling them to acquire skills for livelihood.

However, to ensure success, the Government needs to put further impetus on the execution of the above initiatives and collaborate with industry to ensure sustainable success. Industry Initiatives of designing and introduction of specialized courses in partnership with academia, leveraging of technology & new methodologies to supplement OTJ, and setting up of training centers by the larger organizations to train employees as well as ecosystem partners will be critical in taking ‘Make in India’ to its logical successful completion.

Make In India – Leveraging Human Capital to Prosper in a VUCA World – The 3 Key Principles

Special Forces

Rather than a traditional hierarchical structure, SMEs will increasingly have to rely upon small, multidisciplinary, autonomous teams dedicated to achieving a particular goal in a finite time. Hiring these teams, or at least a large part of them, on an as-required temporary basis, while being counter-intuitive, will certainly be the place where value is created – optimizing the contribution of the workforce thanks to their multidisciplinary expertise, commitment and motivation.

Extreme agility

In the VUCA world, it is vital for firms to respond quickly to any change in their circumstances, realigning themselves without delay. This requires a large amount of decentralization: A strong decision-making command unit combined with the freedom of local entities to make their own decisions. The decentralized units will thus need ‘thinking’ rather than ‘doing’ heads.

Openness

In today's increasingly complex world, it is unsurprising that the most successful actors are those who build the strongest collaborative partnerships – with different firms, customers, public services, researchers, local partners, and others. Such collaboration will need to go beyond mere business commerce, and will need concepts such as ‘shared talent’ and outsourcing to be increasingly used in day-to-day operations.

Make In India – Leveraging Human Capital to Prosper in a VUCA World – Tech Is In

VUCA is an acronym used to describe or reflect on the volatility (The nature and dynamics of change, and the nature and speed of change forces and change catalysts), uncertainty ( The lack of predictability, the prospects for surprise, and the sense of awareness and understanding of issues and events), complexity(The multiplex of forces, the confounding of issues and the chaos and confusion that surround an organization) and ambiguity (The haziness of reality, the potential for misreads, and the mixed meanings of conditions; cause-and-effect confusion) of general conditions and situations. The common usage of the term VUCA began in the 1990s and derives from military vocabulary and has been subsequently used in emerging ideas in strategic leadership that apply in a wide range of organizations, including everything from for-profit manufacturers to education.

Embracing Technology

Those likely to survive, and prosper in today’s increasingly VUCA environment are technophiles, i.e., those constantly innovating and integrating external technological innovation into their business models. The world is becoming less linear and turning into a complex adaptive system. This necessitates a seamless integration of industry, especially SMEs with their limited organic R&D capability, with related academia. Through this the super-technophile younger generation needs to be oriented towards specific skill sets critical for the specific sector.

Cybernomics

This is simply the ability to leverage new technology, in particular Web 2.0, big data-mining capacities and digitization. Here again, the SMEs that are able to win a decisive advantage in this fifth domain by achieving maneuverability and keep their organization lean& high-value, with their modular structures ensuring agility, will prosper the most.