Compliance and trade monitoring

Many companies & government agencies have rules or restrictions regarding their employees’ investing and trading behaviour.

These often arise from regulatory compliance obligations due to conflicts of interest, private material information, or other factors that may influence an employee’s investing in a non-permissible manner.

Industry rules and regulations often determine what types of transactions certain employees are allowed to participate in.

Example 1: An employee of a large accounting firm is working on a multinational acquisition deal between two publicly traded companies. The employee who knows about the deal ahead of time would not be permitted to transact in shares of these companies in most cases.

Example 2: Ted works for a government pension fund as an analyst, and works with different types of investments on a daily basis. Ted would most likely have additional restrictions on the types of investments he’s allowed to make.

Compliance officers at these firms or government agencies are therefore responsible for monitoring the investing activities of their employees. With a large number of employees, this can be increasingly difficult, but this is where direct electronic broker feeds come in.

Electronic broker feeds eliminate the need to review paper statements, greatly increase efficiencies, and lead to cost-savings for all teams involved. Check out the article below for more information on Questrade’s direct broker feed program.