Intermediary INSIGHT
The fund industry standard for SOC and FICCA review.
Your foundation for intermediary oversight.
Omnibus recordkeeping has changed distribution oversight forever. Fund families are now expected to monitor a multitude of intermediary control environments. Audit reports contain the most reliable intel, but how can funds efficiently capture, analyze, and draw conclusions from the details of each document?
Since 2013, NQR’s Intermediary (IM) INSIGHT service has provided leading fund families with the industry’s most in-depth review of intermediary audit reports. Our experts analyze all documentation in accordance with the ICI’s FICCA framework, which is why only NQR’s review is requested, respected, and acted on by both funds and their distribution partners.
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Receive Expert Audit Report Analysis
Receive Expert Audit Report AnalysisAnalyzing audit reports in-house can be time-consuming and expensive. With INSIGHT, you’ll spend little to no time reading reports internally. Our trained, objective experts review all intermediary control documents so you can shift focus to higher-priority activities.
Compare Findings to the FICCA Framework
Compare Findings to the FICCA FrameworkIt’s tough to review each audit report consistently and spot outliers. That’s why our team maps findings to the ICI’s FICCA framework.
Your reporting will provide meaningful, point-by-point intermediary comparisons and automatically highlight exceptions and gaps.
Upgrade Your Industry Intelligence
Upgrade Your Industry IntelligenceIntermediary oversight is daunting to navigate alone. NQR’s industry community is vast and influential, so you’ll gain valuable perspective at client conferences and user groups. You can also skip the report retrieval process for intermediaries with NQR partnerships.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who subscribes to NQR’s INSIGHT Services?
We provide transfer agent, intermediary, and vendor oversight solutions to the nation’s leading financial institutions, including 8 of the Top 10 mutual fund families and a majority of the Top 50. For a client list or references, please contact NQR.
What are the intermediary oversight responsibilities under Rule 38a-1?
The Compliance Rule requires funds to oversee transfer agents in addition to other key service providers. This requirement can be met by using 3rd-party audit reports to assess the transfer agent’s compliance controls. Because omnibus subaccounting is the dominant mode of fund distribution today, effective distribution oversight can only be achieved by extending the same level of oversight to the intermediaries performing sub-transfer agent functions.
Why is NQR’s review considered the industry standard?
NQR has adopted the ICI’s FICCA – an intermediary oversight control framework built by prominent funds, distributors, and accounting firms – as the basis for reviewing all control documentation. Our experts perform a gap analysis between each document’s content and 82 control descriptions derived from FICCA’s 17 Areas of Focus. This process produces the most extensive intermediary operations review, all through the lens of industry-endorsed control areas.
Who from NQR reviews the audit reports?
Our team averages 20+ years of industry experience in audit, operations, and compliance/legal. Since 2013, the team has assessed reports from 100+ broker-dealers, banks, trusts, and recordkeepers – that’s 160+ audited documents each year.
How detailed is INSIGHT reporting?
INSIGHT reports meet the spectrum of needs from day-to-day operations to Board reporting. This includes the full gap analysis by intermediary and specified tiers, page citations, exception details with management responses, and each firm’s FINRA disciplinary history. All data is exportable to Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and PDF.
How long is onboarding once I subscribe?
You’ll be up and running in just 6 weeks. Because the results of our review are delivered through completely web-based reporting, your firm’s commitment is only 2-4 hours and doesn’t require software integration or IT support.
Intermediary Partnership Program
What is the Intermediary Partnership Program?
NQR’s Intermediary Partnership Program is a complimentary offering designed to streamline the audit report request and review process for intermediaries. This collaborative initiative helps intermediary firms uphold compliance, strengthen relationships with fund partners, and optimize efficiency by saving valuable time and resources.
Why Join?
Access a Single Source — When participating in NQR’s Intermediary partnership program, intermediaries send all audit reports to NQR directly, and NQR handles the distribution to authorized fund partners. The end product allows intermediaries to view the same results that authorized fund partners do.
Only intermediaries participating in NQR’s program will receive a detailed report of the audited document(s) as it compares to the FICCA framework.
Save Time and Resources — Consider the amount of time and money intermediaries invest in creating audit reports that fund partners request. The process can drag on further due to follow-up questionnaires that partners send, which require additional time and resources to respond to, and if unanswered, create gaps in oversight.
With NQR’s gap questionnaire, participating intermediary partners can answer a set of focused questions that ultimately cut down the number of follow-up requests from fund partners.
Receive Critical Feedback — NQR provides a report that summarizes the audit report based on the FICCA framework and gives multi-year trending information. This helps intermediaries hone and improve audit report information in subsequent years.
A Partner You Can Trust — NQR works with a majority of the top 50 mutual fund families and many of the nation’s leading intermediaries. By joining the NQR Intermediary Partnership Program, firms gain the peace of mind that only comes from working with an industry-leading provider of oversight solutions for over three decades. NQR is the one-stop solution for mutual funds and intermediaries seeking to bring greater efficiency to their compliance-related interactions.
Join Our Complementary Intermediary Partnership Program
Reach out to NQR today to learn more.
Resources
 Optimize Audit Report ReviewUsing NQR’s Intermediary (IM) INSIGHT Service |
 Intermediary INSIGHT1-Page Overview |
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 An Intermediary’s Perspectiveon Distribution Oversight |
 How NQR’s PartnershipHelps Mid Atlantic |
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 Northern Trust Partners withNQR on Distribution Support |
