illumis — A ComplySci Company | Compliance Updates

Pay-to-Play Compliance: Off Years Still See Increase in Political Contributions Early last year, we published a blog citing multiple statistics on the rapid influx in political contributions, specifically showcasing an increase on the federal level – unsurprising, given that 2020 was a presidential election year.
Pay-to-Play Compliance Update: Delaware County Most Recent Locality to Institute New Pay-to-Play Regulations Starting April 1, 2022, Delaware County will join the growing number of municipalities and localities implementing increased pay-to-play regulations. As reported back in January 2022, this is one more instance within a larger trend of pay-to-play regulations continuing to move local.
Pay-to-play Regulations Continue to Move Local Pay-to-play regulations are becoming increasingly difficult to manage as they continue to move beyond just federal and state laws. We saw this recently in a City Council decision in Pennsylvania:
SEC Investigates Links Between Money Managers and Major Pension Fund A new Bloomberg report alleges the SEC is investigating the relationships between the $66 billion Pennsylvania state pension fund and major investment managers. The SEC issued a subpoena this month to gather details on gifts exchanged between major firms such as Blackstone, The Carlyle Group, Morgan Stanley, Apollo Global, and Hamilton Lane, and executive members of the state pension fund.
illumis Compliance Product Update: Political Contribution Certifications We’re continually updating our political contribution compliance platform to better serve our customers. We’re excited to highlight the newest functionality in our latest feature update.
illumis Compliance Product Update: Better Organizing Data by Employee in illumis We’re continually updating our compliance platform to better serve our customers. We’re excited to highlight the newest functionality in our latest feature update.
illumis Welcomes New Client: Pillar Compliance Group David Lombardy recently launched his own regulatory and compliance consulting firm, Pillar Compliance Group, to assist investment managers with the development, implementation, and ongoing monitoring of their compliance programs. In reviewing the regulatory environment around pay-to-play compliance, he saw the value in using illumis’ political contribution monitoring platform to provide the best risk coverage available for his clients.
Blucora / Ancora Proxy Fight Highlights Reputation Risks of Pay-to-Play Violations For the last few months, Blucora – a FinTech company providing software solutions for wealth management and tax preparation – has waged a war against Ancora, an Ohio-based investment advisor who had acquired a minority stake in the company and sought to reconstitute Blucora’s board.
illumis Compliance Product Update: Entity Search We’re continually updating our compliance platform to better serve our customers. We’re excited to highlight the newest functionality in our latest feature update.
Webinar Recap: Pay-to-Play Compliance and the 2020 Election We recently hosted a webinar around pay-to-play compliance with two experts on the topic—Ki Hong of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and Heather Traeger of TRS, where we covered important, timely issues around the 2020 election. Given the complexity of pay-to-play regulations and potential severity of penalties for violations, as well as the historic political involvement in this election cycle, understanding and monitoring for these risks has never been more important.
illumis Compliance Product Update: Workday Integration & Zero Records Filter We’re continually updating our political contribution compliance platform to better serve our customers. We’re excited to highlight the most recent additions in our latest feature update.
New Report Highlights Potential 2021 Pay-to-Play Enforcement Risks Last month, Compliance Week highlighted some of the compliance considerations for investment advisors (and other regulated firms) around the 2020 elections in a piece headlined “SEC ‘pay-to-play’ enforcement surge projected in 2021”. The article notes that tomorrow’s elections have spurred a massive wave of contributions - and are likely to also trigger a new wave of SEC enforcement.
illumis Compliance Product Update: Introducing Dashboard Graphics We’re continually updating our political contribution monitoring platform to better serve our customers. With the election around the corner, we’re excited to introduce our latest feature update:
illumis Webinar: Pay-to-Play Compliance & the 2020 Election We’re excited to host a webinar regarding pay-to-play compliance around the 2020 election! Please join our team on October 28th at 4 p.m. ET for a conversation with two experts on the subject. We will focus on some of the complexities of pay-to-play law and political contribution compliance and hear from the experts on best practices as well as emerging areas of risk. You can find more details about our guests below and to register, please click here.
Wall Street Journal Article Highlights Growing Push to Equip Compliance Teams with Data Solutions Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal highlighted the increasing emphasis and implementation of data analytics and monitoring tools in corporate compliance programs.
Releasing our U.S. House Candidate Research Report Yesterday, we released our second research report to help compliance teams navigate political contribution regulatory compliance. Download our 2020 Candidate Research Report on U.S. House Candidates here!
illumis Compliance - Fall Product Update This summer we’ve continued to build out powerful tools on our political contribution compliance platform to better serve our customers. Today, we’re excited to share three big features we added to the illumis platform:
Releasing Our First Candidate Research Report for Regulatory Risk Our team of analysts recently compiled various research memos that provide background on the state and locally elected officials running for Federal office in 2020. Today, we’re excited to release the 2020 Candidate Research Report on Senate Candidates. The report lists the current elected offices all candidates hold (or their profession), and also notes some potentially relevant pension funds. We’ll be following up with a report on House candidates soon.
illumis Compliance Product Updates — June We’re continually updating our political contribution monitoring platform to better serve our customers. We’re excited to share five updates we added to the illumis platform in June:
Match Records with Preclearance Requests We’ve been working closely with our customers to build a more streamlined political contribution monitoring system. Today, we’re excited to introduce the newest release on our political contribution monitoring platform: preclearance record matching.
Introducing Preclearance We’re excited to announce we’ve added a streamlined, fully-customizable preclearance tool to illumis’ political contribution monitoring solutions. Our preclearance feature ties political contribution preclearance data and monitoring data together in a single workflow for the first time, enabling significant automation to save time and improve processes for compliance teams across the financial services industry.
Two New Tools for Compliance Teams The illumis team is happy to announce two major releases for our political contribution monitoring platform. Standalone searching and enhanced candidate and committee data will help streamline workflows for compliance teams.
April 2019 Update: Bulk Exports & Date Limit Bulk Exports In addition to the existing individual export functionality and full platform reports, we have now launched a bulk export function that delivers more flexibility and precision around which records you’d like to pull in an export. For example, if you want to see all records for contributions made this year, select “add all” on the export page and select a contribution date window. Or if you’d like to see all contributions that were recorded in the last quarter from a specific set of employees, you can do that as well. See how here:
Potential Pay-to-Play Risks Posed By New Presidential Candidates The growing field of candidates in the Democratic primary represents increased risk of contributions that violate “pay-to-play” regulations, and thus increased risk to financial institutions serving public sector clients. This is especially relevant this month as Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington becomes the first incumbent governor to launch a 2020 presidential campaign.
March 2019 Update: Address Filter And Preclearance Preclearance lists You can now integrate preclearance data into illumis. Use the Preclearance tab to add and store contribution requests to the platform, helping keep your workflows streamlined and centralized, and easily share data across the team.
January 2019 Update: Company Filtering & Auto-Populate Nicknames Auto-populate nicknames Adding common nicknames to searches helps ensure you’re not missing any important contributions. When you add or edit an employee, you can now auto-populate common nicknames to be included in your search. You can also remove or edit nicknames that aren’t relevant to your search.
December 2018 Update: Custom Statuses and Attachments Custom Record Statuses Last month, we launched a feature that allows you to categorize records. We received lots of positive feedback but many customers wanted to be able to further customize statuses. With this update you can now configure your own statuses (up to 5), and customize them to better match your internal workflows and documentation processes.
November 2018 Update: Dashboard and Contribution Statuses & Notes Dashboard View Using the new dashboard view, you’re able to see a continuous stream of all the records added to your account across different people and companies, and organize them as needed. You can also use filters to see records detected within the last day, week, or month.
October 2018 Update: Jurisdiction Filter Jurisdiction View illumis has always allowed you to monitor all of the political contributions made on a name-by-name basis - with data covering all 50 states, major cities and counties, and federal contributions, and updated daily.
September 2018 Update: Company Search & Automated Reporting Company Search illumis has always allowed you to monitor all of the political contributions made on a name-by-name basis. Now, our platform also allows you to search by employer company names as well.

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