Markit Strengthens CRS Oversight With Newly Supported CTI Service

Markit, a global provider of financial information services, has continued its innovative approach to its solutions suite, this time targeting a new tax solution and Common Reporting Standard (CRS) for users, according to a Markit statement.

Just one week after its foray into the Fintech space with Fintech Sandbox, Markit this time has launched its CTI Tax Solutions, which engenders and oversees a CRS that helps identify tax residency and oversight across customer accounts. The solution was designed and supported by several leading players, including Barclays and Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH). Furthermore, both banks have already signed onto the service in a bid to satisfy their own respective CRS requirements.

The scope of the CTI Tax Solutions encompasses upwards of 56 early adopter countries across seven languages, with the latter capability scheduled for Q2 2016. The solution is important for users and venues as its helps enable institutions to validate account data across existing books and records, self certification forms, as well as existing account Know Your Customer (KYC) ) data. One of the primary goals of the launch was also to meet requisite jurisdictional standards in an effort to shore up transparency in this realm.

The launch comes on the back of a shifting focus by regulatory authorities – indeed, as of January 1 2016, CRS requires financial institutions in multiple jurisdictions to have stronger processes around automated solutions for due diligence, monitoring, customer data, tax reporting and responding to authorities’ requests for countries on foreign assets and investments.

According to Cyrus Daftary, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at Markit – CTI Tax Solutions: “As a firm we pride ourselves on our relationships with our customers as well as our strong pedigree and expertise in delivering tax solutions. We have participated in the OECD’s CRS working group and have worked with our key design partners to create a scalable solution to solve for the approaching CRS deadlines.”

“To date, many organizations have spent a considerable amount of time to get to grips with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act which now appears is much smaller in scale. Our experience coupled with our FATCA and Qualified Intermediary offerings will help organizations overcome the next major compliance hurdle related to CRS”.

Markit made waves earlier this month after it underwent an equity deal and valuation of approximately $5.9 billion with business research provider IHS Inc, which moved to acquire nearly 57% of the newly combined company. The aggregated merger value came to just over $13 billion between the newly consolidated businesses with the remaining pro-forma ownership (43%) held by Markit.