Iress teams with regtech for DDO solution

The collaboration will supposedly allow product issuers to publish their target market determinations (TMDs) for products, created through Objective’s Keystone software directly into the blockchain solution – allowing distributors access to updated versions.

Iress has previously marketed its product as an industry-wide, technology-based solution, aiming to coordinate complaints and reporting obligations.

Objective’s Keystone software is already used by a number of financial services organisations for the production of product disclosure statements (PDS) and other compliance documentation.

The DDO legislation will come into effect from 5 October, which will place a host of new restrictions on both issuers and distributors of financial products.

Advice licensees will need to take “reasonable steps” to ensure products are only distributed to the target client segments for which they are intended, according to the ASIC guidance.

Iress chief commercial officer Michael Blomfield commented the new DDO legislation represents a challenge for traditional systems and processes in the advice industry and it requires collaboration.

“We’ve seen strong interest from across the industry in a solution which addresses this challenge of multilateral validation and communication in a way that doesn’t add unnecessary cost or complexity,” Mr Blomfield said.

Objective chief executive Tony Wallis added: “We are excited about the combined expertise of our software with Iress’ technology solution in further driving down cost and increasing efficiency in financial services.”

The FSC and Morningstar also recently launched tools aiming to help advisers adapt to the DDO law.

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