Unlock the ‘Shift Left’ in Regulatory Reporting

For years, financial institutions have relied on a reactive, consultative approach to manage the quality of regulatory reporting data. The usual method involves sending files to external consultants for assessment after the data has been reported, resulting in institutions being caught in a continuous cycle of fixing issues post-reporting.

By the time post-reporting audits identify a problem, often years after a regulation’s implementation, the regulator already possesses the data. The exposure has already occurred, leading to a difficult scramble: informing the regulator, undertaking expensive remediation and correcting the errors.

The truth is that data quality problems will persist unless banks update their core controls. They must transition from outdated systems and processes that only identify issues after damage has occurred. It’s essential to get regulatory reporting correct from the beginning, and technology offers a solution to achieve this.

The “Valid but Wrong” Dilemma

One of the biggest traps in regulatory reporting is the illusion of accuracy. Regulators may accept a trade because it contains a valid date, a timestamp, a counterparty and an exchange. But legacy systems consistently fail to flag scenarios where the data is technically valid but wrong.

One example is time conversions. Trades are stamped with a bank’s local time but are often converted to the regulator’s local time. Timestamps may be formatted correctly but still cause errors due to biannual clock changes. The regulator’s system identifies a valid format and accepts it, but the information is incorrect. Firms need technology that can proactively identify “valid but wrong” scenarios, keeping incorrect data from reaching the regulator in the first place.

Shifting Left with FIS Trade and Transaction Reporting – Assurance

In software development, “shifting left” means testing earlier in the technology’s lifecycle. In regulatory compliance, it means taking control of data quality before submitting reports to the regulator. FIS® Trade and Transaction Reporting – Assurance enables firms to take greater control over their data reporting.

FIS’ solution for assurance provides flexible deployment options, as a standalone, intuitive cloud-based user interface that requires no IT integration, or on-premise deployment to meet strict data privacy requirements. Compliance teams can upload their trade reports into the solution for immediate access to validation results. No complex integration is required.

How Compliance Teams Benefit

FIS Trade and Transaction Reporting – Assurance simplifies daily tasks for compliance teams. Instead of guessing if a system fix will work, users can perform instant remediation testing. They can modify transaction details directly within the FIS interface and re-execute the ruleset to verify if the fix effectively resolves the error, prior to implementing costly upstream changes.

The platform also offers bulk testing capabilities, enabling teams to test field value updates across multiple identical failures simultaneously, providing immediate confidence in their diagnosis. Once resolved in the UI, users can export detailed actionable upstream fixes to share with operations and technology teams, accelerating system updates. By proactively identifying discrepancies before submission, banks help ensure stricter compliance and avoid penalties down the line.

Stop Looking, Start Knowing

In today’s fast-paced regulatory environment, compliance professionals shouldn’t have to hunt for errors in a sea of spreadsheets — technology should prompt them. It’s time to stop waiting for regulators to point out mistakes and shift left instead.

Discover how FIS Trade and Transaction Reporting – Assurance can help you take control of data for more accurate reporting and pre-submission certainty.