With Microsoft making a big bet on its Azure Cloud based services, the impact and implications for Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) space makes for a very interesting case. I will share some interesting industry patterns around GRC on an ongoing basis as i come across them. Today i start off with...

The continued wave of Systemic Risks in Greece and now increasingly Spain, the environmental disaster threaten to shatter the relative financial and economic calm in the business world. Amidst this many countries are undergoing some major changes in the regulatory landscape as a result of the events...

On April 7, 2010, the United States Sentencing Commission [i] voted to modify the U. S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines' standards for what constitutes an “effective compliance and ethics program” [ii] . The Sentencing Guidelines are consulted by judges in connection with companies found guilty...

The explosion in information channels, and increasing use of Web 2.0 and social media poses new challenges. Financial regulations are trying to keep pace – Social Media compliance, eDiscovery, content protection, acceptable use policies, logging and archiving of messages, Instant Messaging tracking,...

I always look forward to interactions with Finance/Risk Microsoft Excel power users. Most times it’s a humbling experience as I come away learning something new about how innovatively they have stretched the capabilities of Excel. One of my earlier blogs speaks about the importance of self-serve in...

It has been estimated that 55 percent of the cost of any compliance program is due to staffing and training 1 . Therefore, semi-automation or full automation of compliance processes can be a critical path to lowering overall compliance costs for large enterprises. One possible approach to developing...

Recently there are some interesting compliance related developments from two self regulatory bodies, that have issue guidance on social networking compliance. With the increasingly popular adoption of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn for business and personal communications...

Microsoft Live Labs recently introduced a private access beta version of the “Pivot” tool leveraging Windows 7, the Internet Explorer rendering engine and Silverlight. Access to the Pivot tool can be requested at http://getpivot.com . Pivot is a multimedia search tool that is designed to create very...

My 18 years experience has taught me one thing - Risk Management and Compliance initiatives by nature are the most complex to execute. Due to the dynamic nature of the industry needs, there are so many moving parts that it gets hard to keep up. Based on my experiences in over 20 global projects, I share...

Regulatory compliance has become an increasingly costly burden. For example, SIFMA has estimated that the U.S. securities industry in 2004 spent $23.2 billion on compliance-related activities(1). In addition, regulatory mandates have become more intrusive in their application to how business is conducted...

As the global economic crisis rumbles on, financial firms of all kinds anticipate an overhaul of risk management and regulatory frameworks. I asked Microsoft’s global head of Financial Services, Susan Hauser, for her views: Sai: Susan, as the global head of Microsoft Financial Services, what has the...

At the heart of the record retention challenge is the difficult question as to what types of documents to maintain for compliance purposes and how long to maintain them. In certain cases, applicable laws and regulations specify the types of documents to retain and the length of time to retain them. For...

One of the challenges facing many companies today is how to handle the production of electronic documents in the course of litigation discovery. For companies embroiled in litigation, electronic document records management can be an increasingly daunting and expensive task[1] . It is black letter law...

In our last blog posting, we summarized the Obama administration’s proposed financial services industry regulatory reforms, as set forth in its “New Foundation” white paper [1] . The following are some of the possible business impacts of the changes, if enacted into law: For hedge funds and...

Risk & Compliance Managers, Private Equity (PE) firms, Hedge Funds, Credits firms and Consumers, in the USA and global financial markets are going to remember this week for a long time to come due to the epic changes in the financial regulation and supervision. The latest US proposal on financial...

Approximately 68% of an enterprise’s corporate data is managed in IT Department-controlled applications and 32% is stored in key Microsoft Excel spreadsheets(1), Microsoft Access and other databases(2) , business intelligence tools (e.g., reporting tools), Microsoft Word and other forms of documents...

Regulatory compliance is being driven in some instances by technology innovation. As an example over the years the records management and retention policies have evolved rapidly to keep pace with technology. I am sure you see similar interesting trends in your part of the world. Let me give a few cases...

Today’s increasingly complex business landscape is matched by an increasingly challenging governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) lan dscape. U.S. multi-national companies are faced with a bewildering array of international, U.S. federal and state regulations, depending on the nature of the...

Hello and a warm welcome from the Microsoft Worldwide Financial Services Team. In this blog Jeff and I will share our perspectives on the current and future state of governance, risk management and compliance initiatives around the world and the enhanced role of information technology as enablers of...