“On Tuesday May 11 in San Francisco, FinovateSpring 2010 showcased the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world.”

The videos from FinovateSpring2010 are now up on the Finovate site. Please check out some of the other 36 companies that demoed substantial new products and/or features. But first, here’s the Continuity Control demo:

Since we posted the initial Finovate feedback, Control has been recognized as being among the:

Most Helpful,

one of the most helpful of the products demoed at Finovate “What if somebody had told you three years ago about “an app store for financial compliance tools”? You’d have encouraged them to check both their diction and their predictions. But with “app” in common usage, Continuity Control actually lets you take an a la carte approach to compliance software.”

Most Interesting,

one of the Five Most Interesting Companies at Finovate “Financial institution compliance services.  Seems like a no-brainer in light of pending financial reform and everything other crisis-reform cycle that has taken place in the financial services sector over the past decade or so.  A solid presentation and what appears to be a solid management team.”

and Most Promising Financial Technology Companies

and, Celent selected Continuity Control as one of  Finovate’s most promising companies to watch in 2010.

Let’s face it, today, credit unions are faced with significant challenges such as driving growth, raising core deposits, member retention, expanding membership and ever increasing competition. Adding to these ongoing challenges is the ever-present and ever-increasing burden that regulatory compliance places on credit unions. At Continuity Control, we refer to this burden in the aggregate as the “Compliance Tax™”, and it is a cost that continues to grow with no end in sight.

This burden is leaving credit unions with the pressing question of “how to manage it all?” as the act of adhering to compliance continues to be more complicated and costly. Managing compliance not only costs in terms of dollars spent but manpower and other resources that have to be dedicated to the process. All of which takes away from serving the credit union’s membership.

This is where technology can be of help and in the end free up the resources that can then be dedicated to serving your members. Technology sits in the background and in the case of Control™, promotes more efficient management of the compliance process. It allows credit unions to have more visibility into the process and make better decisions, leading to better outcomes. In an age of doing “more with less”, technology can play a vital role in enhancing the process by automating tasks that in the past have been inefficient, tedious and manual.

The automation and streamlining that technology can provide is key to not only reducing costs but to better managing risk and compliance. With the proper technology in place the extra work that comes with the manual methods is now eliminated, reducing the work associated with compliance, and therefore reducing the burden and cost of compliance (i.e., the Compliance Tax).

As technology solutions have evolved, the role of making technology work has also evolved. Solutions exist today that enable the user to chose what specific area of compliance to address. These “user friendly” solutions are easy to get, easy to use and with available reporting features — easy to monitor. The main benefit here is that users can be up and running quickly with minimal data to enter and little or no training, and as a result can be productive from the start.

Using technology to manage the process moves risk mapping and auditing from people to software. It eliminates having an individual pushing the process along by automatically distributing the policies, sending reminders, ensuring consistency throughout the credit union and tracking everyone’s progress. The end result is that leveraging technology eases the burden and allows the credit union to focus on what they do best – serving the member.

To learn more about how the cost of compliance is affecting your credit union, I invite you to check out our free Compliance Tax calculator and white paper at www.compliancetax.com.

The first remote I ever saw and used was for my Grandmother’s Zenith TV in the early sixties. The TV was fashionably modern wrapped in white plastic on a pod base. It was wicked, and it had a clicker! While being the youngest by 3 years left me with very little time in command of this wonderful device, it was empowering. I wanted a different channel-bingo! More volume-presto! It was fantastic. It was a reason to go to Grandmas, as our own home would remain remote deprived for a number of years.

As the 70’s gave way to the 80’s we saw cable and VCR’s come into our homes. Video killed the radio star on MTV, and we had the ability to record our favorite shows and watch them until the tapes wore out. In the early days these units were, like the TV’s before them, remote-less, but that was to change. By the end of the 80’s no new units were produced without a remote, and we were on the cusp of the next big breakthrough.

Star Wars was the first film shown with Dolby Surround Sound in 1977. It took nearly 15 years for this to find its way into our homes, but by the early 90’s it was arriving in force. How does this history relate to my clock radio?

Over this period of time we experienced a remote explosion, followed by a features race. Suffice it to say, I view these as bad. To watch TV today requires 6 remote controls with well over 300 buttons. Most of these buttons have two or more alternate functions, leaving me with well over 1000 combinations. I use the word combination on purpose, because figuring out how to watch something often feels more like safe cracking than a simple choice. This has left me with what I call ‘remote rage’.

The primary source of this rage is the desire to do something simple, confounded by the technology that’s supposed to help. Those simple acts that I’d performed flawlessly in 1971, having never seen a remote before, were actions that had led to feelings of empowerment and awe. Today, for me to pick up a remote and attempt to change the channel or adjust the volume, activities that constitute a full 99.999% of all remote usage, I have a 1 in 6 chance of picking up the right remote.

Each of these remotes, whose buttons have likely been pushed inadvertently when throwing it into a basket or to a family member, typically has up to 5 devices that it could control. This math leaves me with a 3% probability of getting it right the first time, or 97% chance of not. Rolling the dice another time doesn’t dramatically improve my odds. Rather than empowerment and awe, I’m now left with feelings of ‘remote rage’.

The reason for sharing this, is that as computer software has exploded over the last decades we’re experiencing a very similar dynamic in which ‘additional applications’ are simply not the answer in the same way that additional remotes are not. The cognitive complexity is hindering the same challenges we’re spending money to solve. A recent Deloitte study shows that increased investments in compliance are not having corresponding returns in improved controls and risk reduction. I offer it up for consideration, are the issues of remote rage and the end of compliance productivity related? I for one think they are intimately related at a human level.

Photo credit: redjar