Personal Profile
Swaminathan (Swami) is the Founder & CEO of IRIS, a global regtech serving some 6000 clients across 42+ countries including, In Africa, Mauritius and South Africa. A Yale University (USA) trained economist, Swami worked at the World Bank in Washington DC as a Consultant before returning to India to pursue a career in the media as a journalist He turned entrepreneur in 1994. He has travelled extensively across Africa and has led business delegations organised by CII to several countries in Africa, including, most recently, to Gabon and Senegal.
Company Profile
IRIS is a global Regtech serving over 6000 clients across 42+ countries, including South Africa and Mauritius in Africa.
Regtech is the use of IT to enhance regulatory processes which helps regulators improve regulatory oversight while helping businesses comply with regulations efficiently and less expensively.
Effective use of Regtech can improve ease of doing business, reduce interest cost for small and large businesses and kindle investor interest to help attract capital.
At the heart of this transformation lies the adoption of data standards such as XBRL, like some 70 countries accounting for over 95% of the world economy.
Here at IRIS, we can help. IRIS is a global Regtech major with solutions built for the emerging digital world where data standards like XBRL are becoming ubiquitous. The World Bank too has been a big votary of XBRL as evidenced by its support for South Africa's XBRL implementation.
IRIS is a provider of compliance software for regulators and enterprises alike. In Mauritius the BANK OF MAURITIUS and CBRD picked our software, iFile, when looking to transform their digital reporting infrastructure. And in South Africa, the company's software won the trust of CIPC who have deployed ifile, while leading companies such as BIDVEST, OLD MUTUAL among others picked IRIS Carbon for their filing requirements. Nigerian conglomerate, DANGOTE turned to IRIS to produce the financial statements of Dangote Cement in XBRL in IFRS, the 1st time, a Nigerian listed company reported its results in XBRL.
Across the world, our clients include business registries, central banks, stock exchange, capital markets regulators and other financial regulators.
It is true Africa has been a late adopter of XBRL. But it will be possible for Africa to not only catch up with the rest of the world but also leapfrog other countries if they act expeditiously.
All of us at IRIS are committed to help African countries formulate and implement a policy on data standards in general and specifically XBRL to strengthen their digitalisation initiatives. The implementation can be done in a PPP mode, as Mauritius CBRD has done, requiring no upfront outlay on the part of the government.