17a-4 provides Designated Third Party services for hundreds of regulated firms. Technical reviews have been expanded for CFTC, CPO and CTAs to continually improve and provide comprehensive compliance consulting services to all clients.
Millbrook, NY – 17a-4 has expanded Designated Third Party technical reviews for CFTC, CPOs and CTAs. Many broker/dealers and registered investment advisors have associated commodity pool operators (CPOs) and/or commodity trading advisors (CTAs) which under CFTC 1.31(b) are required to retain a technical consultant that will be able to assist in the production of records in response to a regulatory inquiry.
Since 2001, 17a-4, llc has acted as a technical consultant to assist hundreds of CFTC-registered entities comply with 17 CFR 1.31(b) and is excited to announce an expanded suite of technical consultant compliance services. The new service offering enables clients to better prepare for and respond to CFTC examinations and audits. The additional compliance consulting covers: a comprehensive IT system(s) configuration plan, execution of access, system reconciliation, audit testing, and provision of easy-to-understand final test reports for compliance documentation.
Developed by 17a-4’s team of professionals’ knowledge of commodity industry recordkeeping regulations and the technical systems commonly in production by entities registered as CPOs and CTAs, clients are provided with our comprehensive set of best practices and procedural insight around:
Operational, Document, and Email Management Systems
17a-4’s technical consultant services are available for all types of regulated electronic records including: transactional, operational, back-office records as well as email and messaging communications. 17a-4 maintains a robust library of information on the client-server or mainframe enterprise products as well as document and email management systems including: Enterprise Vault, SharePoint, Documentum, FileNet, ZL Unified Archive, OpenText and SAP. As these systems are often used by many clients, 17a-4 can leverage experience and perform reviews in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Structuring record archives for exclusively responsive content
The majority of 17a-4’s clients are complex financial institutions with several regulators and many types of regulation. 17a-4 recommends firms manage records so that it produces only the records that are responsive to a specific regulator. In most cases, for instance, EU email should be retained in the EU and not in the US archive. Structuring the record retention architecture requires an understanding of the type of client, business and risk associated with various activities and infrastructure options.