With deadlines fast approaching, BNY Mellon | Pershing is stepping in with two technological solutions to help advisors comply with new best interest regulations from the SEC.

Pershing announced on Wednesday an End to End Form CRS solution and a Tracking and Reporting solution will be available for financial advisors on its platforms.

The June 30 deadline to comply with the SEC’s Regulation Best Interest (aka Reg BI) has not been extended, said Rob Cirrotti, Pershing’s managing director of global strategy and product development, even as the financial services industry has had to move quickly to the reality of working from home during Covid-19 pandemic-caused shutdowns. One of the most critical components of the new regulation is the Client Relationship Summary (aka Form CRS), which discloses to clients a firm’s products, fees, conflicts of interest, disciplinary history and other relevant information.

To abide by the Reg BI, firms will be required to track delivery of Form CRS to clients, keep a record of when it changes and maintain a detailed history of its versions.

“There was an early Deloitte survey on behalf of SIFMA that indicated Form CRS was going to be the most challenging aspect of compliance for most firms,” said Cirrotti. “It’s the most prescriptive part of the regulation. We felt like we could do something to help firms with that.”

Cirrotti said that Pershing has already offered advisors some consultative and educational assistance on how to develop a firm’s Form CRS. Now, the technological solutions implement Pershing’s knowledge in an automated and efficient manner.

Pershing’s End to End Form CRS solution supports Form CRS throughout the processes of creating the form, delivering it, tracking and reporting. Delivery of Form CRS can be integrated directly into a firm’s client onboarding process, allowing firms to capture and store generation dates automatically.

“We recognize that account opening is not the only [thing used], so we’ve rolled out a new forms management system where the CRS can be directed and stored digitally, and married that system with a number of trigger points that require the delivery of a Form CRS,” said Cirrotti. “We’ve given our clients the opportunity to both deliver forms in paper where it’s still necessary, or digitally to the extent that the investor has opted into electronic delivery.”

The solution also allows advisors to send out updated Forms CRS to clients en masse.

The Tracking and Reporting solution allows firms that use different platforms to deliver Form CRS to clients to still take advantage of Pershing’s tracking and reporting capabilities, including the recording of generation dates.

“Every time we generate a Form CRS in our system on behalf of an advisor client and deliver that, we keep records for them and track the production and delivery of that form to the client so that they can demonstrate compliance,” said Cirrotti. “In large firms, all of the tracking is exposed to the home office for supervision and compliance purposes in the form of reporting. The home office has all kinds of reports available to them, they can look up and ask to see all of their firm’s retail accounts and search for any account without a Form CRS generation date associated with it, and then go back and ensure that any gap that occurs is [bridged]. They’ll be able to go back and ensure that every retail investor receives a form CRS.”

Most advisors appear to be adjusting well to the new regulations, said Cirrotti, even with the deadline for compliance just over a month away. Most were preparing for new fiduciary regulations years ago when it appeared the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rulemaking would become the law of the land, while others who waited to make significant changes during the DOL’s process are more likely to struggle to come into compliance with Reg BI.

Though the pandemic hasn’t yet pushed back the SEC’s regulatory deadline, it has in some ways helped advisors become more prepared, said Cirrotti.

“There’s now a shared experience between firms and advisors, and advisors and the end investors,” he said. “They’re seeing the value in increasing our use of electronic delivery and the overall digitalization of the business. Investors are seeking ways to get information quickly without having to handle paperwork or the mail, and advisors are now realizing that perhaps in the past they didn’t do the best job that they could in collecting and tracking information. That’s all driving a change in how we’re delivering materials to each other. We think it’s an opportunity for the industry to step forward.”

Pershing is offering both digital Reg BI solutions as add-ons to its advisory platform using a tiered fee schedule depending on the size of the client and the number of accounts, consisting of an implementation fee, an annual fee for the maintenance of client records on the platform, and a per-piece fee for any non-digital delivery to cover print, paper and postage costs.