Confluence, a provider of automated data management solutions, has announced that The Principal Financial Group has chosen the Confluence Unity Post-Trade Compliance solution to expedite the monitoring frequency of its compliance testing systems.

Prior to implementing this solution, The Principal Financial Group, which manages 112 funds with 614 share classes, was completing testing on a manual basis, using multiple spreadsheets and time-consuming data checks. They wanted the flexibility to do multiple tests each day, refresh data more often, and to comply with new rules without expanding its employee base, or budget.

Unity Post-Trade Compliance automates the process of testing investment managers’ portfolios for compliance with regulatory and investment limit restrictions.

“Scaling our back-office staff to implement a more robust compliance testing system would have added more than $485,000 to our annual payroll costs,” said Layne Rasmussen, vice president, controller, and chief financial officer at Principal Funds. “With Unity Post-Trade Compliance, it takes only one full-time staff member just four hours a day to complete the daily testing, reporting, and reconciliation. Unity Post-Trade Compliance enabled us to avoid a significant increase in payroll costs.”

Rasmussen noted that the back-office team has also elevated the level of service they provide to the principal as a whole. By assuming full responsibility for all post-trade compliance activities, they have relieved the fund accounting department of this burden, while gaining additional control over data the accounting team previously generated.