Trillium Software Recommends Financial Firms Urgently Test Their Readiness for International Tax Agreements

READING, UNITED KINGDOM and BILLERICA, MA--(Marketwired - Jul 24, 2013) -  Trillium Software®, a business of Harte-Hanks, Inc. (NYSE: HHS) and a leading provider of Total Data Quality^™ solutions, has commented on the data management implications for financial institutions as countries continue to consider adopting rules and regulations that promote the exchange of international tax information of a similar style to the United States' Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA).

A wave of such acts is looking increasingly likely. In late June, the government of the United Kingdom (UK) published through its tax authority, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) the discussion document: 'Implementing the United Kingdom's Agreements with the Crown Dependencies to Improve International Tax Compliance' Additionally, various EU nations have signed their support for similar arrangements in the HM Treasury document, 'Statement on the pilot multilateral automatic information exchange facility.'

"It is looking increasingly likely that multiple governments will agree to tax information exchange agreements of one sort or another, in their fight to cut offshore tax evasion," said Jon Asprey, vice president, strategic consulting at Trillium Software. "These additional compliance demands place further pressure on financial institutions to verify that their client data is sufficiently complete, accurate and free of conflicts to allow applicable accounts to be identified, classified and then reported to the appropriate authorities."

Trillium Software is a provider of data certification solutions that are designed to improve regulatory compliance processes for financial services firms. Using Trillium Software's data certification solutions, firms can gain a comprehensive assessment of the completeness and accuracy of their client data as well as the effectiveness of their customer data capture processes. These solutions can help firms establish the degree to which they are able to verify client accounts against the indicia prescribed in FATCA, the HMRC tax information exchange proposals and such acts as might be passed by other nations."

"Recently Trillium Software highlighted for one institution that as many as 100,000 accounts appear to have data issues needing manual investigation before they can be confidently verified as either subject to, or not subject to an information exchange under US FATCA," said Asprey. "Rectifying the large numbers of data issues we've located in some institutions can be thousands of hours' work, so it's important to assess data readiness for tax-information exchange regimes in good time, or firms could risk expensive, last minute remediation costs and even non-compliance."

According to HMRC's discussion document, tackling offshore tax evasion requires the sharing of financial information between governments. A first step towards this new international standard will be to conclude agreements between the UK and the British Crown Dependencies (Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey) and those Overseas Territories with financial centres (Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands).

To learn more about Trillium Software's compliance solutions, or to discuss your compliance-related data concerns with Jon Asprey and his financial services compliance team, click here or contact Trillium Software at +44 (0)118 940 7666 or from within the U.S. at (978) 436-8900.

About Harte-Hanks
Harte-Hanks^® is a worldwide direct and targeted marketing company that provides direct marketing services to local, regional, national and international consumer and business-to-business marketers. Visit the Harte-Hanks Web site at http://www.harte-hanks.com or call (800) 456-9748.

About Trillium Software
Trillium Software^® is a business of Harte-Hanks, and the leading best-of-breed enterprise data quality software and services provider in the world. Trillium's data quality experts help organizations achieve increased business value from their global data management initiatives by providing enterprise data profiling and data cleansing software solutions that collaborate with existing data systems and applications.

Trillium's data quality suite of products enable business executives and information technology professionals to profile, govern, manage, cleanse, and visualize data for CRM, MDM, regulatory and compliance, data warehouse and business intelligence initiatives. The company offers industry-specific business solutions that help solve data problems experienced by financial services, insurance, risk, healthcare and retail professionals. For more information about Trillium Software and its offerings, call (978) 436-8900 in the United States and in the United Kingdom call +44 (0) 118 940 7666, or visit Trillium Software online at http://www.trilliumsoftware.com.

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