Benjamin Grosof, CTO and CEO of Coherent, demonstrated the use of Coherent’s Ergo Suite system (formerly known as Episto) to automate compliance with banking regulation policy at the EDM Council webinar on June 26, 2014.  The webinar focused on an application-pilot proof-of-concept for such compliance using advanced business rules and natural language processing semantic technology.  The webinar was attended by nearly 200 members of the financial industry.  The pilot was first presented at the Object Management Group (OMG) “Semantics – Crossing the Chasm Workshop” on March 26, 2014.

Mike Atkin, managing director of the EDM Council, introduced the webinar event by remarking:

The concept of ontology and common language is gaining traction everywhere. It’s gaining traction at the right level for the right people.  But when you combine common language with executable business rules you really start to understand the potential of inference based processing.  So I’m going to ask you to pay close attention, this is what the future of linked risk analysis is going to look like.

Dennis Wisnosky, Senior Consultant at EDM Council and former CTO and Chief Architect of DoD Business Operations, emphasized:

We learned that this can actually work …  I believe that the stage is set for continuing this within the financial community in real world applications

Benjamin Grosof and Coherent helped formulate and lead the pilot effort over the last year, which was organized under the auspices of the EDM Council.  Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Council is a non-profit trade association and leading advocate for the practice of data management as a business and operational priority in the financial industry; its members include many of the most important banks and regulatory agencies in the world.  The pilot work was done by an industry consortium composed of Coherent in collaboration with SRI International, Wells Fargo Bank, GRC Technology Centre of Ireland, and EDM Council.  The pilot demonstrates the use of advanced executable business rules (Textual Rulelog) in combination with the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO) to automate compliance with the Federal Reserve Board’s Regulation W (Reg-W).

A recording of the webinar can be viewed in its entirety here or at the EDM Council site (under Latest News).  Benjamin Grosof’s remarks and demo can be found from minutes 46:40 – 1:02:30. Wells Fargo Security’s Managing Director for Compliance Controls and Infrastructure, Wesley Moore, provides an excellent overview of the expected benefits of this technology to financial compliance performance at 23:00 (his full remarks run from minutes 18:30 – 25:20).

Full Speakers List from the webinar:

  • Dennis E. Wisnosky – Senior Consultant, FIBO, EDM Council, (former CTO and Chief Architect, DoD Business Operations)
  • David Newman – Strategic Planning Manager, Senior Vice President, Wells Fargo
  • Wesley Moore – Managing Director, Compliance Controls and Infrastructure, Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
  • Dr. Elie Abi-Lahoud – GRC Technology Centre, University College Cork , Ireland,
  • Dr. Grit Denker – Senior Computer Scientist, Computer Science Laboratory, SRI International
  • Dr. Benjamin Grosof – CTO, CEO, Co-Founder, Coherent Knowledge Systems