Your Keys, Your Coins – Your Choice! Pt. 4: Policy

Pt. 4: Policies that reflect your workflows

In today’s complex world, automation and control are the ‘name of the game’. If ‘time is money’ then automation means increased ROI, productivity, and profitability. While control means consistency, time, and authority. The situation is no different when it comes to crypto transactions. For institutional investors, who manage millions in AUM, thousands of transactions a day are not unheard of.

While an institutional-grade custody solution is a given. The choice of such a solution for your organization can mean all the difference when serving hundreds of high-maintenance customers. Moreover, in today’s volatile crypto landscape, it can mean the difference between benefiting from market upsides and…. well, not.

However, in the metaverse, automation is many times the ‘antithesis’ of control and security. Automation is synonymous with ease, speed, and connectivity. And these, often equal vulnerability to attack. 

To mitigate these risks in your custody solution, the answer often lies in the policy engine. One that you can adapt to your own processes and workflows. A good policy engine, allows you to tailor approval policies and configure a list of rules that affect how transactions are handled. They can define whether a transaction is blocked, approved, or requires additional approvers using various filters such as account, destination, asset, initiator, and amount.

Not as easy as it seems

There are several challenges that financial institutions may face when implementing a policy engine. The first is how can an organization provide the functionalities required without compromising security – and as mentioned this is perhaps the most difficult to overcome. Another challenge is about minimizing errors and oversight in a new asset class, based on new technologies, with changing customer requirements. 

Implementing a policy engine can require significant time and resources, as it involves defining and setting up the policies and rules that will be used by the engine. This can be a complex and time-consuming process, especially for organizations that have a large number of policies or complex decision-making processes.

There also may be technical challenges associated with implementing a policy engine, particularly if your custody solution is not well-suited to support your processes and workflows. This can include issues related to security, permission granularity, compatibility with existing systems, and scalability.

How can you know if a policy engine is right for you?

Whether a policy engine is right for your organization will depend on a number of factors, including the size and complexity of your organization, the types of policies you need to manage, and your budget and resources. Some considerations to keep in mind when asking about the capabilities of the policy engine:

• Scalability: The policy engine should be able to handle the current and future needs of your organization. This includes the ability to manage a large number of policies and decision-making processes, as well as the ability to adapt to changing needs and requirements over time.
• Ease of use: The policy engine should be intuitive and easy to use, with a user-friendly interface that allows you to create, manage, and apply policies quickly and easily.
• Integration with existing systems: The policy engine should be able to integrate with your organization’s existing systems and infrastructure, including data sources and other decision-making tools to allow you to set one standard for all. This will help to ensure that the policy engine can be seamlessly integrated into your existing processes and workflows.
• Flexibility: The policy engine should be flexible and customizable, allowing you to define and adjust policies and rules as needed to meet the specific needs of your organization.

Combining best-in-class policy management technology with workflow automation can provide:

Yet, up till now most custody solution policy engines were limited in scope. You could define transaction policies, and role-based rules, however, these were often rigid and not easily changed. With the GK8 policy engine, your organization will be able to independently define rules and policies at the account level, giving each user a different type of permission for each account, or even transaction type within that account. The level of granularity and flexibility  enabled by the GK8 policy engine is comprehensive, giving you the ability to adapt the policies and workflows to your business logic on your own.

Don’t let technology dictate your processes, our Policy Engine was developed to provide an intuitive interface through which you can adapt and customize the GK8 platform and align it with the processes, policies, and workflows of your organization.

To learn more about GK8 solutions, click here.