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Over the past six months, in a drive to enhance client experience Equity Trustees has been implementing a new online system for to manage our due diligence program. The Zeidler Counter-Party Due Diligence (CDD) system has been successfully used in our London and Ireland operations over the past two years.

The Zeidler system provides a more intuitive, streamlined and flexible platform, which will reduce the manual handling and time taken to complete the due diligence under our old platform.  One of the key features of the system is the ability to auto-fill information from previously submitted due diligence responses.

Implementation stages

The Equity Trustees team is implementing the system in 3 phases – with the first completed and the second and third phases in progress.

Phase 1 – Initial Due Diligence for new clients

The implementation of the comprehensive initial due diligence questionnaire for our new clients has been piloted and is now complete.

The system enables the questionnaire to be completed more easily, enabling supporting documents to be uploaded without the need to email additional supporting documents. The system also allows for users to delegate a specific question to another user, and to track the stage of completion of the questionnaire.

Phase 2 – Quarterly compliance attestations

Equity Trustees has transitioned our internal risk and compliance system, GRC Manager to a new system called CAMMS. GRC Manager has now been decommissioned.

From quarter end 31 December 2020, all quarterly compliance attestations completed by our clients will be completed using Zeidler, with all previous users of GRC Manager being transitioned to the Zeidler platform.   

All existing clients will receive an email within the first two weeks of January 2021, to alert you that you have been assigned a compliance attestation question set that requires completion.  When you first access the system, you will be asked to set a new password.  You will have three weeks in which to complete and submit your compliance attestations.

Phase 3 – Annual Due Diligence Review

Our annual due diligence program is conducted in the first quarter of the calendar year.  The annual due diligence program will also be completed using Zeidler. A new user account will be created for all existing respondents. Zeidler will issue an alert when the annual due diligence questionnaire is ready for you to complete and upload supporting documents.

The next round of the annual due diligence review for investment manager clients will be for the period of 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020 and will be available from mid-January 2021.

The next round of the annual due diligence review for service providers will be for the period 1 April 2020 to 31 March 20201 and will be available from mid-April 2021.

Key Dates

ACTIVITY PERIOD
WHEN ISSUED
COMPLETION DATE
Quarterly compliance attestations 31 December 2020 quarter- end Issued to users mid January 2021 Completion within three weeks of receipt
Annual due diligence review – Investment Managers
1 January to 31 December 2020
Issued to users mid-January 2021
Completion within four weeks of receipt
Annual due diligence review – Service Providers
1 January to 31 December 2020
Issued to users mid-April 2021
Completion within four weeks of receipt

What's Next

As each phase as described above is rolled out, we will provide you with User Guides to assist in you becoming familiar with the system. You do not need to do anything else, unless you wish to remove, add or change users for your organisation.

Please contact productteam@eqt.com.au if you wish to do so.

ABOUT ZEIDLER

Founded in 2008 in Frankfurt, the Zeidler Group is a law firm and technology-driven provider of legal and compliance services for the asset management industry with offices in London, Dublin, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Mumbai. Today, Zeidler serves around 150 asset management clients from around the globe.

Zeidler can assist asset managers with the whole fund life cycle including setting up of investment funds, advising on cross-border distribution matters and global fund registrations in 50 jurisdictions, counterparty due diligence, aggregation and dissemination of fund data and reporting documents such as Key Investor Information Documents (KIIDs), European MiFID Template (EMTs), European PRIIPs Templates (EPTs), etc. and other ongoing fund distribution related legal and compliance matters

Find out more about Zeidler