Castine Consulting offer a unique due diligence portal to manage all aspects of an asset manager’s due diligence surrounding their selection of research providers and brokers.
Castine’s Compliance Telescope supports buy-side firms’ regulatory requirements for vendor due-diligence and precautions against the misuse of material non-public information (MNPI).
The Compliance Telescope is built around a “Universal Due Diligence Questionnaire” (UDDQ) that brokers and research providers complete and distribute on an invitation-only basis to their clients and prospects. The Telescope’s UDDQ covers the broker’s and research provider’s compliance policies, procedures, and other compliance documentation typically required by the buy-side. Rather than collect this in a time-consuming and error-prone manner for each new buy-side/broker or buy-side/IRP relationship, the Universal DDQ provides all of this information in one place. Ready to go. And ready to tailor when needed.
The buy-side saves time and effort in the collection and review of this critical information.
The sell-side and research community saves time by managing the distribution of their DDQ information in an orderly, one-answer-serves-many basis.
Castine Consulting LLC, formerly known as Cogent Consulting LLC, was originally formed in 1982 by Robin Hodgkins. Castine and its predecessors have operated as the market leader in every industry they’ve worked in.
Most recently, the firm was the world leader in software that managed all aspects of soft dollars and commission sharing arrangements for investment managers, research providers, and broker-dealers. That product line was sold to BNY Convergex (and later transferred to Eze Software) and the company was renamed as Castine Consulting.
Prior to working in the finance arena, Castine (under the “Cogent” name) was the #1 provider of multi-partner oil, gas, and extraction solutions to the international exploration community. Its client base included every major oil and gas company and many of the largest mining firms worldwide, with over 2,000 installations in 60+ countries. The oil and gas business was spun off in 1997 and is now part of a public company.