Fios Compliance Launches the World’s 1st Open Data Intelligence Platform for Compliance Risk Mitigation

Fios Compliance, an Open Data Intelligence platform, is launched to support integrity checks across various sectors. Fios is the Gaelic word for Knowledge.

India’s regulatory universe is seen to comprise 1,536 Acts, 69,233 compliances, and 6,618 filings. A segment of these requirements focuses on meeting regulatory compliance requirements, both domestic and global, and some are connected to FATF requirements. Fios Compliance provides relevant and timely extended open data intelligence (a.k.a. OSINT) through its automated screening process, which enhances independent regulatory and risk mitigation checks.

The platform utilizes secure cloud-based technologies that can access a wide range of domestic and international regulatory compliance databases. The service is available to financial institutions, corporations, and regulated entities seeking a comprehensive, reliable, and future-ready approach to compliance to include fit and proper due diligence for formal submission.

Deepak Bhawnani

According to Deepak Bhawnani, Managing Director at Fios Compliance, “Our mission is to provide clients with advanced open data intelligence solutions that enhance their ability to meet compliance requirements. Through automated research and screening of global sources, we support clients in identifying and evaluating comprehensive risks, setting a new standard for regulatory resilience.”

Key features include adverse/negative media screening, global sanctions and watchlist checks, PEP exposure, significant litigation, and insolvency checks for reputation risk insights. Fios Compliance continuously onboards new portals and their databases and aims to bring all countries within its operational coverage.

Open Data collection and collation techniques enable efficient filtering and analysis of diverse information sources, including regulatory and corporate filings, and digital footprints, providing organizations with a new level of external due diligence and fraud prevention capability.

The scale of digitally available public data is staggering: the world's ten largest libraries collectively house about 700 million items, while search engine web indexes comprise over 400 billion documents. However, this is likely less than a third of all available open data. Fios Compliance leverages this data for Extended KYC and Sanctions Screening by searching for risk indicators beyond traditional methods.

This innovation is made available when global regulations, including India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and international guidelines such as GDPR, impose stringent requirements for integrity and transparency of business data. Fios Compliance’s adoption of industry best practices, emphasizing legitimate and accurate data, ensures organizations are prepared for evolving compliance reporting standards.

About Fios Compliance

Fios Compliance is backed by the leadership of Alea Consulting and provides relevant and timely enhanced open data intelligence for Indian and global entities and individuals through its automated processes to enhance regulatory compliance mitigation.

India to Make Consumer Data Open to All to End Tech Giants' Monopoly

With evolving technology comes several demerits also and one of them is 'Data'. Often touted as the 'new-oil', Data is flowing through the economies of the world by few tech behemoths like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, who have control over vast amounts of data about their customers, which they use exclusively to make them way ahead of smaller firms or start-up ventures, despite of the fact that the data belong to customers without any exclusivity.

To end this monopoly of tech giants, NITI Aayog, the think-tank of Indian government, is considering a proposal to make consumer data accessible to all, subject to riders, instead of being the exclusive preserve of a few tech firms, reported Economic Times.

According to the report, inability of fintech firms to access data was among the key factors that led the NITI Aayog to come with this step.

As per the proposal by NITI Aayog, an independent regulator with overarching powers will be setup to ensure that no entity has monopoly over data that has been anonymized so that the information can not be tied to specific individuals and their privacy is protected.

Beginning with sectors - banking, e-commerce, health and education, the regulator will be available across sectors and if implemented then information emerging from any transaction -- what is bought and sold, borrowings, loans, health and insurance records, assets and insurance policies -- will be available and can be obtained by anyone on request.

In terms of technicality, the data will collected from all large companies on a real-time basis in a standard format, which would then be anonymized and converted into indices and trends to reflect consumer preferences.

Data anonymization is a type of information sanitization whose intent is privacy protection. It is the process of either encrypting or removing personally identifiable information from data sets, so that the people whom the data describe remain anonymous.

Aayog had set up five groups that focussed on constraints restricting growth of fintech in India and far-reaching recommendations to help the sector realize its full potential.

The aayog is also keen to promote "Open Banking" system, a new concept in which data is shared through application programming interfaces (APIs) between two or more unaffiliated parties. The system is fast gaining traction across the globe with the U.K. government establishing the Open Banking Working Group (OBWG) already in late 2015 and has now mandated nine banks to enable open banking since January 2018 while Europe has made it mandatory for all banks.

"Indian fintech industry has the potential to solve not just India’s unique needs of financial inclusion, access to credit, limited insurance reach but can also serve as the solution provider of choice for global financial sector to emerge as one of fintech global hubs of choice,” the Aayog said in a statement.

NITI Aayog To Launch Portal To Offer Govt Data For Startups Despite Existing One

Indian government's policy think tank NITI Aayog is planning to launch a new portal in next six months that will allow private organisations, especially startups, to use public data available with various ministries for innovation and come up with sector-specific solutions, announced Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog, reports Economic Times.

Speaking on the sidelines of a conclave on artificial intelligence organized by Bennet University, NITI Aayog’s CEO Amitabh Kant has said that the Aayog will soon launch a new portal that will open the floodgate of public data for private companies especially startups to come up with innovative sector-specific innovations.

Amitabh further said that the government departments are generally hesitant in sharing public data with private players which has restricted the scope of technological research, thus by opening a window of data for private players will not only expand the scope of research in India but also promote innovation.

It is to be noted however that, in 2012, India has already launched portal -- Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India or data.gov.in -- a platform for supporting Open data initiative of Government of India. This portal is a single-point access to datasets, documents, services, tools and applications published by ministries, departments and organisations of the Government of India. It combines and expands the best features of India government's India.gov.in and the U.S. government's data.gov project.

Now the question is, how different will the upcoming portal announced by NITi Aayog CEO be from existing one (data.gov.in) and what is the need for it? when there's already one in existence which can easily be revamped and enhanced to solve the purpose of offering public data window to private players.

Moreover, the Aayog would also come up with a strategy document on artificial intelligence (AI) soon, laying down some sort of guidelines for use of public data by private players. “I believe innovations always come before the regulations. Hence, policies might not be very relevant. And in certain areas, it’s better for the government to let private players innovate and disrupt,” said Amitabh Kant in the AI conclave organized as part of leadingIndia.ai -- a collaborative initiative by 100-odd institutions to promote research in the field of AI.

It may be recalled that, this month NITI Aayog partnered with tech giant Google to stimulate growth in India's nascent artificial intelligence and machine learning ecosystem by working together on several initiatives in these new-age technologies.

Speaking about AI strategies within the country, he said that the artificial intelligence could help increase India’s year-on-year growth rate by 1.3% and that the government was already working with organisations, such as Microsoft and IBM, in that direction. “We are using artificial intelligence for improving agricultural productivity, using ISRO data in over 100 aspirational districts across the country,” he added.

On leadingIndia.ai, Kant said, “Such initiatives have the potential to change the landscape of AI research in India as they bring together startups, industry and academia to work on providing application-inspired ideas.”

Dr Deepak Garg, director of leadingindia.ai initiative, said they look forward to working with NITI Aayog to solve some of the critical problems that would help improve the quality of life in the aspirational districts. They are also planning to setup a centre of excellence in AI at Bennett University with the help of Govt of India, he added.

The Bennett University, which is a part of Times of India group, has launched leadingindia.ai initiative with aims to impart training in artificial intelligence technologies to nearly one million students in two years.

Notably, Amazon had set up its first Intelligent Devices Lab in the country, on the Bennett University campus in Greater Noida, that would help create new skills and promote cutting-edge research in speech technology.