Leading Provider of Compliance Solutions for Financial Firms Says Advantages of Doing Business in “Wall Street West” Region Crucial to its Decision
SECCAS LLC is opening a secondary data operations center in Scranton, Pa., a decision that the provider of hosted compliance solutions for financial-services companies said was made after reviewing multiple locations in New York, New Jersey and Maryland.
SECCAS, whose customers include banks, broker dealers, registered investment advisers, hedge funds and other financial firms, said the Scranton facility will provide full redundancy for its New York City operations and also serve as the primary location for the firm's litigation-readiness business.
“Northeastern Pennsylvania is an ideal location for disaster-recovery facilities,” said Daniel Summa, President of SECCAS. Mr. Summa noted that the region is served by a different power operator and watershed than the New York region, making it a safe, reliable location for a backup facility that can also provide real-time data replication.
“Northeastern Pennsylvania provides the added benefit of a well-educated, motivated and experienced workforce, as well as lower operating costs, especially when compared to New York City,” Mr. Summa added. “And unlike what we saw in other parts of the country, Wall Street West was able to bring together the state and local municipalities as well as private entities to work together with a single voice. That combination of factors makes northeastern Pennsylvania and Wall Street West ideal partners to support our business growth.”
Wall Street West® and its economic development partners, worked closely with SECCAS for several months to identify a location that meets the company's requirements for a mission-critical back-up site. Wall Street West is a partnership of more than two dozen local, regional and statewide economic development agencies, technology investment groups, workforce development organizations, educational and research institutions and experts from the private sector.
The Wall Street West partners seek to bolster New York City's stature as the country's preeminent financial center by providing disaster recovery and back-up locales for that city's financial-services firms. The partnership is supported by a $15 million Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.
“While northeastern Pennsylvania is already a flourishing region for the financial-services and insurance industries, we will further strengthen the high-skill job opportunities in the region in the coming years,” said Catherine Bolton, Project Director at Wall Street West. “We're both pleased and proud that SECCAS sees the terrific value in the region and are working with other firms whose offsite data needs can best be served by the opportunities in our region. And this first Wall Street West success story shows what happens when regional partners - the city of Scranton, the Scranton Plan, DCED, Penn's Northeast, and the Governor's action team - work together.”
About SECCAS
SECCAS LLC is a privately held company headquartered in New York City that offers a feature-rich tool set for streamlining regulatory compliance delivered as a managed service. Through a simple Web-based interface, clients can view email, IM, Bloomberg, and Webmail; review, sort, score, and search messages by keyword, groups, email address and date range; manage administrative privileges, generate reports and more. Subscription service includes unlimited access (24x7), training and support as well as monthly WORM archive disks.
Serving the financial community since 2001, SECCAS is a preferred vendor of several major New York investment banks, streamlining compliance for large and small firms alike. SECCAS provides a “best of breed” service at a reasonable cost in a secure environment. The SECCAS service can be up and running in less than an hour with most users trained in about 30 minutes. The product is completely transparent to the end user; there is no need for users to change their email or IM addresses.
About Wall Street West
Wall Street West is a not-for-profit partnership of more than two dozen local, regional and statewide economic development agencies, technology investment groups, workforce development organizations, educational and research institutions and experts from the private sector. The group secured a $15 million Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to help fund its effort to attract New York City-based financial institutions to establish their back-up and back-room operations in the region. The Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania is the project manager of Wall Street West. Partners of Wall Street West include:PA Dept. of Community & Economic Development, NEPA Alliance, Monroe County CareerLink, Northampton Community College, Penn's Northeast, Lehigh Valley Workforce Investment Board, Lehigh University, Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation, Northeast Pennsylvania Technology Institute, Berks County Workforce Investment Board, Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business & Industry, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeast PA, PA Department of Labor and Industry, US Department of Labor, Lehigh Carbon Community College, Lakeland High School, Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds, Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, PPL Corporation, Coronel Management Group, Inc.,Junior Achievement, Berks Pike County Workforce Development Agency, Reading Area Community College, Luzerne County Community College, Air Products & Chemicals, Department of Community & Economic Development, Lehigh County, BobHay.com Realtors, Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Team Pennsylvania Foundation, PA Office of Financial Education, Berks Economic Partnership, Pocono Mountain Economic Development Corp., Riverside School District, DSS Corporation,Junior Achievement of Northeastern PA, Inc., Diversified Information Technologies Inc., Fulton Bank, Great Valley Division, CANDO, Inc., Luzerne County Workforce Investment Office, Pocono Mountains Chamber of Commerce, Penn State University, Berks, East Stroudsburg University, Blue Cross of NEPA, NE PA Educational Intermediate Unit, Pocono Counties Workforce Investment Board, Pocono Counties WIA, Wilkes University, Wayne County Economic Development Corp., Greater Berks Development Fund,Lackawanna County WIA, and Technology Development & Innovation-University of Scranton. Additional information is available at www.wallstreetwest.org.
