The dilemma
An outsourced compliance officer runs several client functions across funds, trust and investment business. Each engagement deserves the same methodology: the same risk taxonomy, the same control library, the same test templates, the same discipline about conclusions and actions. And each client deserves data that is only theirs: their registers, their history, their audit trail, visible to them and to nobody else on the consultant’s book.
The tools most consultants inherit force a choice. A shared workbook per client gives independence and loses consistency; a practice-wide system gives consistency and puts every client’s data in one place. Neither survives the moment a client asks “who else can see this?” or the moment a regulator asks “is this client run the same way as the last one?”.
What should be shared
The method. A risk taxonomy that maps to the obligations each licence carries. A control library with design and operating ratings. Test templates that say what the tester does, the sample, the evidence and what a pass looks like. A single scale of conclusions and a single way of raising and closing actions. Share these and every client is run to the same standard, and you can show it.
What must be separate
The data. Each client is its own entity: its own obligations register scoped to its licence, its own risk assessment and appetite bands, its own control set, its own monitoring plan, its own registers, its own audit trail. Access is scoped per client, so your team sees across the portfolio and each client sees only itself.
This separation is also what makes the engagement portable. When a client grows into an in-house function, or moves to another adviser, the entity, its history and its audit trail are already in the client’s name. Nothing needs to be extracted or rebuilt; access moves.
Dashboards you hand back
A client function or board wants its own position: the heatmap against its own appetite, the monitoring plan’s progress, the open actions, the registers. If the system is entity-scoped, that view is a permission rather than a monthly report you assemble. Hand the client its own dashboard and the quarterly pack becomes a conversation about the numbers rather than a hunt for them.
The consultant’s own oversight
Across the portfolio you need the same things a fund administrator needs across a client book: which engagements have overdue tests, residual risks outside appetite, actions past their deadline, regulatory changes not yet closed. That is a consolidated view over independent records, and it is what lets one practice run a dozen functions without any of them drifting.
What the product should be to the consultant
A tool the consultant uses to support clients, not something the consultant has to defend against. A software-only vendor with no consulting practice of its own has no reason to compete for the engagement; the product travels with the work.
How Vantage Point runs it
Vantage Point runs each client as its own entity with independent data and audit trail, shares the taxonomy, control library and test templates across the portfolio, gives per-entity dashboards that can be handed to the client function, and is software only: there is no consulting practice on the side. Each client sits in the Entities module. The partner programme is for outsourced compliance officers and consultancies running client portfolios on it. See the solution for outsourced compliance officers and the partner programme.
Questions
- How does an outsourced compliance officer keep client data separate?
- By running each client as its own entity in the system: its own registers, risk assessment, monitoring plan and audit trail, with access scoped per client. The consultant's own team sees across engagements; a client sees only its own.
- What should stay consistent across engagements?
- The method: the risk taxonomy, the control library, the test templates and the way conclusions and actions are recorded. That is what lets you promise every client the same standard and prove it, while the data underneath stays theirs.
- What happens to the data when a client brings compliance in-house?
- It stays with the client. If the engagement is run as the client's own entity, access moves to their team without rebuilding anything: the registers, the history and the audit trail are already in the client's name.
- Can a client board see its own position without seeing the consultant's other clients?
- Yes, if access is entity-scoped. Per-entity dashboards and reports can be handed to the client function or its board with nothing else visible.