BMO Capital Markets Chooses Fenergo for Fatca, Derivatives Compliance

BMO Capital Markets has chosen to use the onboarding system provided by Fenergo, a client lifecycle management software provider, to help it manage the requirements of the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca) and derivatives regulations.

The first phase of the project is focused on Fatca compliance and will go live on July 1, when the regulation comes into force. The second phase of the project will be launched in September and will deal with derivatives regulations in the different jurisdictions in which BMO operates. Marc Murphy, Fenergo's Dublin-based CEO, says implementation of the Fatca component will take just 16 weeks in total.

Fenergo's onboarding system is based on a rules-driven compliance process. The business rules consider factors such as the country of incorporation of an entity and the products in which it invests. Sub-rules classify entities according to the requirements of individual regulations.

"The challenges are entity data and having a single repository of all of the legal entities and information about how they are associated," says Murphy. "Once you have that data secured and cleansed, it is about having a single rules engine for all of those regulations, and then the collection and management of all of the documents pertaining to those regulations linked to the rules."

He continues: "Every front-office user across global markets at BMO will use the Fenergo system to request new clients, to onboard, to refresh the data, to enrich any shortcomings in that data. So it becomes a real centerpiece of all of the events linking to client interaction and management."

The BMO Capital Markets deal is the second project Fenergo has undertaken for a Canadian client this year. At the Inside Reference Data Awards in May, Fenergo won the Best Enterprise Data Management Initiative (User) for its work with Scotiabank, which it announced in February. Murphy said that project helped to secure the deal with BMO Capital Markets and that he expects to win mandates from other Canadian institutions over the coming year.