ONLINE Disclosure Risk
The Challenge
Today’s investors are better protected from market manipulation by legislation that demands accurate, complete, timely and universal disclosure. Our current regulatory environment puts a greater onus on issuers to design comprehensive disclosure controls and procedures (DC&Ps) that ensure compliance and demonstrate accountability.
Public companies are vulnerable to disclosure risk when:
- their DC&Ps are inadequate and do not apprise relevant senior executives of potential material information on a timely basis.
- their DC&Ps are executed manually and thus open to human error and omission.
- their disclosure records are incomplete or hard to search, and the processes and approvals by which they develop disclosures are not sufficiently documented.
- their reliance on external vendors impedes timely, universal disclosure.
Corporate Disclosure in the Internet Age
The Internet is the primary communications channel for investor information, which is clearly evidenced by the SEC's recent changes to Reg. FD. Decisions to buy, sell, recommend, downgrade or even investigate companies are often influenced by information gathered from corporate web sites. Moreover, the information that contributes to decision-making is not limited to core documents and filings, such as press releases and financial reports. It includes content dealing with strategic growth initiatives, market opportunities, competitive or industry information, SWOT analysis, project or product information — in fact anything that might position your investment opportunity could be seen as material information.
Despite this, most companies do not adequately align their corporate web sites with the stringent disclosure controls and procedures they use for regulatory filings and core documents. As a result, if asked by a regulator, most companies would not be able to verify what information was on their web site at a given date and time.
The Solution – Q4 Disclosure Management Software
Q4 solutions protect you from disclosure risk by mapping to your internal disclosure controls and procedures and automatically funneling information upward within your organization, ensuring the right people see and review it in a timely manner. Automated workflow and approvals lessen the need for manual processes, thereby reducing errors and omissions.
In addition, by automatically capturing comprehensive, searchable records of the entire disclosure process, Q4 solutions give you complete, immediate information regarding all associated approvals, dates and the exact time that information was disseminated to the market.
Each of our products reduces or eliminates your reliance on external vendors to distribute material information, providing you with greater internal control over the timing of your disclosure.
Specifically our products help in the following ways:
Q4 WEB is a solution that provides unprecedented control over your entire corporate web site, eliminating the need to use external vendors to update your site or disseminate information through email alerts. Q4 WEB automatically creates electronic records of all content and approvals in real time. It creates verifiable audit trails and enables you to instantly retrieve fully-functioning replicas of your corporate web site as it appeared at any point in time.
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