Case Study

Financial Services Authority UK

The Client

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is an independent non-governmental body, granted statutory powers by the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. It has been the single regulator for financial services in the UK since December 2001.

The FSA now regulates most financial services markets, exchanges and firms. It sets the standards that they must meet and can take action against firms if they fail to meet the required standards.

Firms Online

The Challenge

Following the successful implementation of the 'High Street Firms' application, the FSA required a solution to meet the legislation driven, mandatory reporting regulations from 2005 to regulate this large and newly authorised population of firms.

Vizor was tasked with designing a solution that enabled all newly licenced UK firms to complete timely and accurate regulatory returns and submit them to the FSA, making it possible for the FSA to validate, approve and analyse the submissions.

Our Solution

Built using Vizor Software, the Firms Online system comprised of two distinct parts: Regulatory Transactions and Integrated Regulatory Reporting. The system covered the vast majority of the UK's regulated financial intermediaries and processed all regulatory returns and ad-hoc transactions for these firms.

Firms Online was successful in streamlining formerly paper-based reporting, improving support for regulatory processes, eliminating redundant data and minimising ad hoc requests.

High-level solution features:

• Advanced front-end data collection through web forms, with 17 levels of data quality and control.
• A submission framework integrating with the FSA's backend systems.
• Allowed firms to create, edit, validate, submit and print tightly controlled forms for the collection of financial data.
• Allowed Firms to view their submission history and up-to-date reporting schedules.
• System functionality and accessibility controlled through varying levels of permissions and security.
• Extensive user management functionality defined a complex user hierarchy within the system.
• Designed and engineered to cope with peak periods of throughput and capacity.
• Flexibility of Vizor Software allowed updates to reflect changes in the business environment over time.
• Firms' returns were individually tailored based on firm profile.
• Comprehensive maintenance package and SLA provided.

The Outcome

This system proved extremely successful with over 28,000 firms regulated by Firms Online and approximately 99% of the firms contained in the IRR regulatory population registered on the system. More than 139,000 returns and a further 110,000 notification forms have been processed through the system.

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