TillieStar Compliance Solutions
Helping Firms to Navigate through the Complexities in Compliance

Today, a growing number of companies across various sectors view compliance as central to their corporate strategy. While significant progress is being made by compliance departments in the Investment Management space to evolve their monitoring and assurance capabilities—shrinking margins continue to pose daunting challenges for many firms, forcing expanded outsourcing of front-office and mid-office functions and increasing technology expenditures to stay competitive. Furthermore, in light of the ongoing pandemic— firms also need to address the gaps in their systems and business practices revealed by employees working remotely, all whilst dealing with continued market volatility. The need to transform long-standing operating models to keep up with the competition and digital-enabled customization is becoming a core client expectation. Companies are simultaneously seeking to move away from pure cost-efficiency projects to creating a more cost-conscious culture, allowing them to increase competitive advantage in the process by generating additional value for their customers. With compliance an increasingly critical component of the corporate agenda, companies need to deploy advanced tools to sharpen their focus and increase the efficiency and accuracy of their monitoring and assurance activities. This is where one company, TillieStar Compliance Solutions, Inc. (“TillieStar”), is carving a niche. TillieStar partners with its clients to transform their operations using proven tools and methodologies in a way that promotes long-term sustainability, with cost-savings being a natural byproduct. The firm can do this thanks to its team of specialists in front-office compliance software implementations, software upgrades, multiple regulatory regimes, workflows, and data enhancements. TillieStar also provides staff augmentation services to clients in the investment compliance space.

TillieStar offers expertise in day-to-day compliance operations such as Rule Library Maintenance, Client On-boarding, Workflow Modification, Batch, and Pre-trade Compliance. With each year bringing new hurdles to compliance, the company’s experienced compliance consultants and process engineers help clients create seamless workflows and upgrade existing processes utilizing advanced AI tools without affecting business operations. “The company consists of a highly-trained team, who are experts in both investment compliance and engagement management. Aside from assisting our clients in the transformation of their compliance operations, we can also helpput processes in place to address communication challenges, and help keep the workforce connected,” says Joy M Langdon, President of TillieStar. The team at TillieStar first conduct a ‘health-check’ by thoroughly assessing a client’s pre-existing systems and processes, including current resources, stakeholders, goals, and objectives, to highlight the key constraints limiting the company’s performance. Once the initial assessment is completed— TillieStar provides clients the estimated timeline, scope, and budget for the project.

According to contract requirements, a crucial step of the company’s process is communicating to the project teams through periodic status reports detailing project metrics. “We analyse client needs to facilitate greater decision-making that enables execution of the set plan, on-time, on-budget,” explains Joy.

The company consists of a highly-trained team, who are experts in both investment compliance and engagement management. Aside from assisting our clients in the transformation of their compliance operations, we can also help put processes in place to address communication challenges, and help keep the workforce connected

To illustrate TillieStar’s solutions’ efficacy, Joy narrates a case-study where her firm helped aclient create a new global operating model. The client operated their compliance teams from five different locations and had trouble globalizing their model. TillieStar helped the client design and implement a new operating model by creating a global center of excellence where all compliance system maintenance would be performed, following a consistent global practice. The firm also trained and ensured that the client’s compliance teams were up-to-speed with compliance best practices and software tools. Owing to TillieStar’s efforts, the client now has a clean compliance rule library and is in a greater position to move forward with their company’s strategic acquisition goals.

As a veteran in the compliance industry, Joy has spent the last 18 years working for various asset managers as a consultant and supporting clients on different compliance platforms for over 85 firms in North America, APAC, and Europe. “We’re seeing a trend of compliance teams in a reactive position and facing multiple challenges in their day-to-day operations because of limited budgets,” elucidates Joy. Currently, TillieStar seeks to create an outreach program and collaborate with prominent technology providers worldwide to predict and develop relevant solutions for the coming decade. In alignment with this future endeavour, TillieStar has rolled out a ‘free Lighthouse service’ to help clients restricted by financial constraints. “We want to partner with major players in the industry to diversify our solutions for clients in varying price points, because we recognize that companies are increasingly constrained by budgets every year,” concludes Joy.