Dynamics CRM -xRM Success Story

Alberta Regulatory Agency Increases Visibility and Relationship Management with xRM Solution for Collaborative Regulatory Management

Business Situation

The Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) is the regulatory agency responsible for administering the province of Alberta’s securities laws, enforcing the Alberta Securities Act, educating the general public, ensuring that companies adhere to continuous disclosure requirements, and regulating Alberta’s capital markets. The ASC’s personnel interact with a variety of companies, individuals and organizations. The challenge faced was to more efficiently organize information, decisions and interactions between the ASC and the general public, the investment community and the securities market. Their legacy system also created challenges in managing business processes and information exchanges between and within ASC divisions, as well as capturing and updating information from external sources such as the National Registrant Database (NRD).

Solution

The ASC’s primary requirement was to replace its15-year old operational system with a solution that has leading business application capabilities. Microsoft Dynamics CRM was selected to provide a flexible platform meeting the unique requirements of the unique model in which the ASC operates. The resulting solution truly represents the concept of xRM, as Dynamics was completely reconfigured to support the regulatory, compliance and enforcement requirements of the ASC. While certain functionality was reused and repurposed, there are over 40 custom entities to support a wide range of xRM business processes such as: case file management for investigation and litigation of violations such as insider trading; continuous disclosure reviews of the filings submitted by the companies the ASC oversees: and oversight examinations of regulated investment management firms. In order to support these processes, the solution was integrated with a mandatory document filing and retrieval system for Canadian companies and NRD (registration database for securities dealers, investment managers, advisors, etc.).

Benefits

The ASC now has greater visibility into its regulation of companies and registered dealers and advisors as well as its interactions with the general public. Processes are now executed more effectively than had been possible with the previous system that was in place. Examples of benefits include:

  • Enforcement division is able to more efficiently intake complaints from the general public, maintain and track case files, schedule hearings, manage documents and notations for ongoing investigation and litigation purposes, and record cease trade orders, fines and settlements.
  • Corporate Finance division is able to more accurately and quickly track and manage incoming obligatory filings from corporations, organize collaborative reviews of filed materials, and maintain up-to-date information regarding each and every corporation within local and non-local jurisdictions.
  • Market Regulation division is able to better organize initiatives pertaining to the Canadian investment market – changes that affect investment management firms, registered investment professionals, as well as work more effectively with self-regulatory organizations.
  • Communications & Investor Education division is able to better categorize, reroute and/or address incoming requests for information and educational materials, as well as more efficiently organize educational seminars and other public events.