Showing posts with label regulations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label regulations. Show all posts

Saturday, 27 September 2008

Testing results of jComply beta 1.0

Over the past two months, jComply Beta 1.0 has undergone some rigorous testing schedule. Apart from our ongoing in-house testing, we have worked with industry professionals, consultants, compliance and risk managers from the financial, healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors to carry out detailed functionality testing of our policies and procedures management system. These efforts have resulted in bringing out issues/bugs and a number of recommendations to further improve our product. The issues were logged in our issue management system and are being traced to resolution. The recommendations on the other hand have been absorbed in our development roadmap.

I am therefore thankful to all those who have participated in our testing so far and can’t wait to work with individuals who are scheduled to test our releases in the coming months.

jComply, a policy and procedure management system is expected to be released next month. To learn more about jComply, visit www.tabaqsoftware.com/jcomply

or

to register for a free no-obligation demo, fill up the form at http://www.tabaqsoftware.com/registration.html.

Thursday, 17 January 2008

Clamp down by FSA

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is setting an example by clamping down on financial institutions found in breach of their regulatory requirements. FSA has started the year by issuing huge fines to two financial institutions; £1.085 million to HFC Bank (part of HSBC Group) for PPI failings and £250,000 to Square Mile Securities Limited (a stock brokerage company) for high pressure sales tactics.

The big question is, is FSA setting the tone for 2008? Are we going to see more fines issued for negligence or lack of having customer due diligence policies in place?

What puzzles me is that the average John is so naive enough to buy into the pressure sales tactics used by companies like Square Mile. We are not really talking about a door to door sales man trying to con innocent housewives. Surely, the customer also needs to take some responsibility, step back, educate oneself and then take a calculated risk. As they say, ignorance of law is no excuse. I feel, while FSA is clamping down on financial institutions to comply with its regulations, efforts ought to be made to educate the customer on making sound financial decisions based on calculated risk.

Note:
PPI covers repayments on loans, mortgages and credit cards if the borrower is unable to make them because of loss of earnings as a result of accident, sickness, unemployment or death.

News Links:
http://www.fsa.gov.uk/Pages/Library/Communication/PR/index.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7191506.stm

Friday, 14 December 2007

Falling standards in UK healthcare

It is not very encouraging to see that some of the prominent hospitals in UK have shown below par hygiene standards in recent years. NHS body Health Facilities Scotland produced a report last year which showed three of the Scotland’s leading hospitals not meeting the hygiene standards. NHS Watchdog and the Healthcare Commission have produced reports in the past two years highlighting various levels of falling standards.

Where are these falling standards taking us? According to the Patients Association, the general views shared by patients about NHS service are long waiting periods, delayed appointments, fear of filing complaints and confronting the doctor, office hours only, etc. Instead patients ought to be treated as customers and stakeholders.

For once globally renowned and exemplary British NHS service, up to-date and technologically advanced tools are required to give fair judgement to the assessment criteria. In that respect, it was a relief that NHS decided to part with the star rating system for the hospitals which was more synonymous with giving stars to children in schools. For the first time, last year NHS trusts assessed themselves against 44 quality standards of basic competence. According to the health inspection body, only third of the country’s 570 trusts met the standards, which include safety, governance and patient focus.

Thankfully, developments in technology have given us the ability to develop systems that can help the trusts implement these standards across the board and certify themselves. Read more about jComply and how it can help with your compliance process at jcomply.com.