Intelliflo has collaborated with Brookland Computer Services, a specialist technology solutions and advisory firm with 20 years’ experience working for regulated clients in the financial services and legal markets, to produce a comprehensive GDPR toolkit ahead of the new regulation coming into force on 25 May 2018.
The toolkit has been created specifically for the financial advice profession and provides a detailed overview of all aspects of the new regulation, also taking into account the discussions and agreements of the ongoing Intelliflo GDPR Working Group. As well as highlighting each of the requirements covered by the GDPR, it also provides advisers with useful advice and checklists to guide them to take appropriate action to achieve compliance.
Alongside the toolkit, Intelliflo and Brookland have produced a ‘readiness assessment’ that enables advisers to quickly asses how far their systems already meet the new regulations and helps them identify which areas need attention.
Rob Walton (pictured), Intelliflo’s Chief Operating Officer and Chair of the Intelliflo GDPR Working Group, an industry group set up in 2017 and which represents around 2,000 UK-based advice firms, says: “Since setting up the GDPR Working Group last year, it’s become clear that many advisers are finding the new requirements of the regulation challenging both in terms of understanding its scope and in having the resources available to make the necessary changes.
“Our aim is to work with our customers and provide them with as much help and assistance as we can to achieve compliance with minimum disruption to their daily business. The new toolkit and the readiness checker are designed to give advisers a practical and effective way of engaging with the new requirements. They are particularly useful for advisers who are working alone or in small firms. This group doesn’t have the support of on-site compliance teams and they are often under enormous time-pressures. However, they are as much at risk as any adviser firm of incurring fines, or being sued by disgruntled clients, should a data breach happen.”
Eamonn Fogarty, Director at Brookland Computer Services, says: “We are really starting to see firms ramp up their efforts to become compliant with GDPR before 25 May. The assessment and toolkit that Brookland and Intelliflo are providing to financial advisers can form an important part of these efforts, since they help firms identify their strengths and weaknesses in regards to complying with GDPR, better positioning them to focus their efforts where they are most needed.”
