K1 Investment Buys Actiance
K1 Investment Management has acquired Actiance, a pioneer in communications compliance, archiving, and analytics.
Pending regulatory approval from government authorities, Actiance will be combined with Smarsh, which provides archiving solutions for compliance, e-discovery, and risk management, creating a company focused on compliance and enterprise information archiving.
The combined company will serve more than 6,500 financial services firms - including the top 15 global banks and regional, mid-size banks and broker-dealers - as well as government agencies and organizations in other regulated industries.
The financial services sector is undergoing rapid change and legacy technologies are no longer sufficient to comply with SEC and FINRA standards, let alone MiFID II, said Neil Malik, managing partner at K1.
The combination of capabilities from Actiance and Smarsh will provide the industry with a way to get ahead of compliance trends, while introducing the modern communications technologies to increase efficiency and effectiveness in the modern enterprise, he added.
Citing a recent study of disciplinary actions from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), K1 says that 99 books and records cases were reported in 2016, resulting in a 435% increase in fines compared to 2015. In addition, regulatory examinations have become more comprehensive, with more scrutiny aimed at the recordkeeping and supervision of electronic communications.
In addition, looming data privacy regulations, such as the EU’s GDPR will have major implications for global organizations with even bigger financial and reputational consequences for non-compliance, K1 notes.
The combination of Actiance and Smarsh is aimed at helping financial and government institutions to stay ahead of compliance within an increasingly complex and evolving legal and regulatory environment.
Together, the combined company offers deployment options (cloud, dedicated, on-premise, and hybrid) to meet the needs of its customers and provides capture, compliance, archiving, and supervision support across the broadest range of electronic communications, including email, social media, mobile messaging, instant messaging/collaboration, encrypted chat and voice communications.
For more information about the companies, go to www.actiance.com, www.smarsh.com, and www.k1capital.com.