Outside Business Activities Software; Employee Conflicts Compliance for FINRA and MiFID II
Affinisio(OBA) is built for organisations that belong to, are associated with, or provide services to broker-dealers, investment advisers, banks and asset managers exposed to United States or European Union regulation. Affinisio(OBA) supports global standards across local jurisdictions such as India, enabling compliance with the strictest of all applicable requirements.
Employee Outside Activities, Managed from Disclosure to Continuing Affirmation
Centrally monitor, review and manage employee requests and disclosures of outside business activities, for compliance with FINRA and MiFID II requirements.
OBA
(Compliance Officers)
Intuitive disclosure and approval for outside business activities, from second jobs to weekend volunteering to speaking engagements and everything in between.
OBA
(Employees)
Compliance Officers
The central organisational mechanism for managing conflicts of interest arising from employees’ outside business activities, against both the regimes you answer to and the ethics policy you set.
Affinisio(OBA) asks the questions that matter for each activity, drawing out what is relevant so disclosures arrive complete the first time and reviewers stop chasing missing information.
Reviewers raise and resolve queries inside Approval Central, where the original request sits. Nothing moves to email, so the question, the answer and the context stay together in one record.
Supervisors, compliance and risk experts weigh the time an activity will take alongside the duties of the role and the conflict itself. Reviews run in parallel or in sequence, by type of activity.
Ask employees to confirm, at intervals you set, that they still meet the conditions of their approval. Reminders go out automatically, and every affirmation joins the permanent record.
Set different rules for the kind of organisation an activity is for, from a competitor to a charity. External positions your organisation itself assigns are handled as a separate case.
Approving an activity records the organisation behind it as an indirect relationship of the firm. The connection is saved automatically and stays on the record, so the firm knows who its people are connected to.
Route each request by what the activity actually is. A speaking engagement can go to Legal and Corporate Communications, a second job to the supervisor and Compliance, on the flows you set.
Not every case fits a standing flow. One-off situations and missed disclosures are reviewed and delegated inside Affinisio(OBA), so nothing is handled by side conversation.
Automate review flows based on whether activities are remunerated (e.g. second job) or unpaid (e.g. charity trusteeship). Payment is not the test, so an unpaid role can carry the sharper conflict.
Report by person, activity or department for management reporting, audit and review. Export in the formats you use. The underlying data never leaves your own estate or your control.
Employees
Quickly and easily disclose your outside business activities. Provide all relevant information exactly as needed to ensure quick or even automated approvals while maintaining full compliance.
Raise and manage your outside business activity disclosures from your own login. No hunting through email trails, no lost approvals, and nothing that depends on remembering.
Your disclosures sit behind your own login and are seen only by those authorised to review them, so you can meet the obligation without opening your private life to the office.
The form adapts as you answer, asking only what your situation calls for. Approvals move faster, and you are not asked to account for more of your private life than the case needs.
You are told where things stand without having to ask. Clarifications, interim decisions and the outcome arrive in your inbox, carried on your organisation’s own mail servers.
Follow a request through every stage and answer interim questions in one place, whether it is sitting with your supervisor, Legal, Compliance or any other department along the way.
The conditions attached to your approval remain available whenever you need to check them, alongside the formal decision and the conversation that led to it, under your own login.
A donation drive or a weekend helping animals is not a second job, and it is not treated as one. Where your organisation allows it, activity of this kind can be approved automatically.
Speaking or writing in public raises a question beyond your time: whether your view sits against the house position. Affinisio(OBA) assists with this analysis with the right approvers.
Short prompts appear beside the fields you are filling in, and the full manual is there when you want more. You can raise a support request from inside Affinisio(OBA) itself.
Simplified reporting and review for positions you hold on your organisation’s behalf, including seats on industry bodies. Preset structures handle them without the review a personal venture would need.
Features
Affinisio(OBA) Is Built to Sit Inside the Working Day
Managing outside business activities is usually framed as a trade-off between what an employee may do and what compliance must see. It does not have to be.
Compliance officers see every disclosure, every approval and every condition attached to it in one record, and can report on all of it.
Employees disclose in their own login, answer only the questions their activity raises, and can see where the request has reached.
Paid or Unpaid Outside Activities
Apply review policies by remuneration and by organisation type
Affinisio(OBA) applies review policies based on whether an outside business activity is remunerated and on the type of organisation involved. Differential flows apply to volunteering, charitable trusteeships, NGO roles and industry body memberships.
Conflicts of Interest Take Many Forms
Conditional Questioning by Type of Outside Business Activity
Speech at a conference? Weekend job? Trusteeship of a charitable board? Contributing an expert article? Independent directorship? Making a private investment? Every activity raises different questions. Affinisio(OBA) structures your review flow, your way.
Checks Built into the Disclosure
Automated Employee Ethics Checks at the Point of Disclosure
Built-in restrictions carry your own policies into every disclosure of an outside business activity. On-screen guidance shows what is permitted while the request is being made, so employees are steered before a conflict of interest arises.
Comprehensive Reports
Outside Business Activities – Informed Reports, Detailed Insights
Gain detailed reports and insights into OBAs with comprehensive reporting tools. By types of activities, departments, reviews, employees, timelines and much more. All reports are restricted to those with an established ‘Need-to-Know’ by default.
Review and Monitor Conflicts
Continuous Visibility into Every Approved Activity
Opt for ongoing review and continuing affirmation of every approved outside business activity. Employees confirm they remain within the conditions on which approval was given, so a conflict of interest is caught as it forms rather than at the next audit.
Automate Application of Review Rules
Your Policies, Applied by the System Not by Memory
Affinisio(OBA) applies your own policies to each outside business activity as it is disclosed. The same facts meet the same rule every time, so consistency does not depend on which reviewer picks the request up.
Who Your People Are Connected To
A Standing Record of Indirect Relationships
Approval does not end the matter. The organisation behind the activity is saved as an indirect relationship of the firm, so the record of who your people are connected to builds itself, disclosure by disclosure, rather than being assembled when someone asks.
More than a software application, AFFINISIO IS YOUR COMPLIANCE AND GOVERNANCE CENTRE.
All Affinisio applications are backward & forward compatible. Existing required data auto-feeds seamlessly into new ones.
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Have questions? Connect with the Affinisio team.
Affinisio(OBA) FAQs
What is Affinisio(OBA)?
Affinisio(OBA) (Outside Business Activities) is a module of the Affinisio suite by Affinisio Technologies LLP. It manages employee outside business activities and the conflicts of interest they raise, from first disclosure through review and approval to continuing affirmation. Conditional questioning draws out what each activity actually involves, and the organisation behind an approved activity is recorded as an indirect relationship of the firm.
Which activities does Affinisio(OBA) cover?
Affinisio(OBA) covers employment, directorships, ownership interests and consulting, together with the public-facing activities that raise conflicts of a different kind: speaking engagements, expert articles and industry body memberships. Paid and unpaid activities are both in scope, and positions the organisation itself assigns are handled as a separate case.
Does an unpaid activity need approval?
Yes, where your own policies require it. Affinisio(OBA) sets review flows by whether an activity is remunerated and by the type of organisation involved, so volunteering, charitable trusteeships and NGO roles can follow a different path from a paid second job. Remuneration is not what makes an activity a conflict.
Which firms and regulations is Affinisio(OBA) built for?
Affinisio(OBA) is built for broker-dealers, investment advisers, banks and asset managers, and for the organisations that belong to them, are associated with them or provide services to them. It supports firms answering to FINRA in the United States, to the FCA in the United Kingdom, and to MiFID II across Ireland, the Netherlands, Malta, Cyprus, Germany, France and Denmark. It also supports firms in India whose obligations follow from those offshore linkages, applying the strictest of all applicable standards across local jurisdictions.
How does Affinisio(OBA) handle speaking or writing that may sit against the firm’s own published position?
Most outside-activity reviews ask how much time an activity will take. Speaking and writing raise a different question: whether the view expressed sits against the firm’s own published position. Affinisio(OBA) asks that question at the point of disclosure and routes the request to legal and corporate communications alongside compliance, recording any conditions, such as a required disclaimer, with the approval.
What happens to the organisation named in a disclosure?
When an outside business activity is approved, the organisation behind it is saved automatically as an indirect relationship of the firm. Nobody re-enters it and nobody maintains a separate list. When that organisation appears again, in another employee’s disclosure or in a review of the firm’s connections, the existing relationship is surfaced.
Which systems does Affinisio(OBA) integrate with?
Affinisio(OBA) integrates with your HRMS for employee and organisational data, with SSO and LDAP for authentication and directory services, and with SMTP for notifications. An API is available for further integration with your own systems.
Can Affinisio(OBA) be deployed on-premises, and where is the data held?
Yes. Affinisio(OBA) can be deployed on-premises, inside your own estate, or hosted. On an on-premises deployment the data never leaves your estate: disclosures, approvals, conditions and the record of indirect relationships all reside internally and within your control. Affinisio Technologies LLP holds ISO 27001:2022 certification.
Who reviews an outside business activity request?
Reviewers are set by your own flows, not by ours. A second job may go to the employee’s supervisor and to compliance; a directorship may add the conflicts office; an activity that touches a client or a competitor may add risk. Reviews run in parallel or in sequence, by type of activity, and reviewers weigh the time an activity will take alongside the duties of the role and the conflict itself.
Second Job – Outside Business Activity
Unpaid Outside Business Activity
Expert Article – Outside Business Activity
Speeches – Outside Business Activity
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