Given that many financial institutions’ transformation list to adopt new technologies has grown in recent years, having a firm sense of the ultimate purpose behind that technology is critical to getting it right and embracing major change. That’s according to the head of Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions in a recently published interview exploring the mindset needed for technology teams to successfully develop—and implement—those same technologies to meet the complex challenges of financial services customers.

“They’re not just creating code… (or) different architectures. It’s linking it all the way to the actual impact that it has for our end customers,” explains Steve Meirink, Executive Vice President and General Manager for Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions, in a Mortgage Professional America feature, “Tech Must be Purpose-Built.” “It sounds like simple work, but I’ve seen a lot of organizations where you ask somebody what they’re working on and how that impacts their own community, and someone would say ‘I don’t really know.’ That’s been a major initiative for us—to further engage our entire technology organization to not only create great technology, but to know how it benefits others.”

Meirink notes that a big priority for Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions is to make sure that his tech team knows the technology they develop is not built in a vacuum.

“All of the products and applications that we provide to customers through technology enable financial services professionals to do their job—to assist small businesses and consumers to achieve a financial dream or goal,” Meirink says. “That is really important in terms of how we view our role in the marketplace.”

Purpose-built technology has led the way in many financial services arenas, he notes, from Wolters Kluwer helping lenders quickly access critical small business funding during the pandemic crisis, to the creation of digital assets “in all lending areas, including mortgage” that are fundamentally changing the lending industry for the better.

In the future, he believes that technological priorities and advances will focus more on identity. “It’s around knowing who you are doing business with and being able to have high confidence that you know [what] the identity is of that counterpart,” Meirink says. “That’s really what the mortgage industry is built on.”

Focusing exclusively on the mortgage and finance industry, Mortgage Professional America is part of international publishing group Key Media, providing the latest breaking news, cutting-edge opinion, and expert analysis affecting mortgage and finance professionals and their industries.

Steve Meirink oversees a growing business in Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions which, during 2020, helped U.S. lenders navigate the Paycheck Protection Program through its award-winning TSoftPlus technology to assist small businesses working to retain their workforces. Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions acquired the leading digital lending platform, eOriginal, in late 2020 and, earlier this year, IDS, a leading U.S. provider of compliance and document generation software solutions for the mortgage and real estate industry.

Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions is a market leader and trusted provider of risk management and regulatory compliance solutions and services to U.S. insurers, banks and credit unions, and securities firms. The business, which sits within Wolters Kluwer’s Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) division, helps these financial institutions efficiently manage risk and regulatory compliance obligations, and gain the insights needed to focus on better serving their customers and growing their business.

Wolters Kluwer’s GRC division provides an array of expert solutions to help financial institutions manage regulatory and risk obligations. Wolters Kluwer Compliance Solutions’ OneSumX® for Regulatory Change Management tracks regulatory changes and organizes them to create structured, value-added content through a single data feed that is paired with an easy-to-use software solution. Wolters Kluwer Finance, Risk & Regulatory Reporting (FRR), meanwhile, is a global market leader in the provision of integrated regulatory compliance and reporting solutions. The division’s legal solutions businesses are Wolters Kluwer CT Corporation and Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions.

About Wolters Kluwer Governance, Risk & Compliance

Governance, Risk & Compliance is a division of Wolters Kluwer, which provides legal and banking professionals with solutions to help ensure compliance with ever-changing regulatory and legal obligations, manage risk, increase efficiency, and produce better business outcomes. GRC offers a portfolio of technology-enabled expert services and solutions focused on legal entity compliance, legal operations management, banking product compliance, and banking regulatory compliance.

Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the healthcare; tax and accounting; governance, risk and compliance; and legal and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services. Wolters Kluwer reported 2021 annual revenues of €4.8 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,800 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.