Future-Ready Compliance Advisory
Making regulatory compliance simpler, stronger, consistent
Future-Ready Compliance Advisory
Making regulatory compliance simpler, stronger, consistent
Vantora Consulting
The Compliance Specialists
Vantora Consulting is a dedicated compliance and regulatory advisory firm built exclusively for the energy and commodities markets. With deep expertise in Platts Market-on-Close (MOC) governance and participation, we help trading houses, brokers, refiners, utilities, exchanges, and financial institutions navigate complex regulatory rulebooks and benchmark-setting requirements. We translate REMIT, EMIR, MiFID II, MAR, Dodd-Frank, and market-conduct obligations into practical, operational controls that fit seamlessly into front-office workflows. Our advisory approach is hands-on and outcome-driven: we don’t simply interpret rules—we design, implement, and embed frameworks that stand up to regulators, auditors, and internal governance. Whether guiding clients through MOC oversight, implementing surveillance solutions, or building an entire compliance function from the ground up, we deliver trader-friendly, scalable, and regulator-ready controls. Vantora ensures robust governance from day one, enabling clients to participate confidently and competitively while maintaining best-in-class compliance standards.
Compliance Advisory Services — Vantora Consulting
REMIT, EMIR, MiFID II, MAR Advisory
We provide clear, actionable guidance across the full suite of regulatory obligations that energy and commodities firms face. This includes end-to-end advice on trade and transaction reporting (including EMIR), real-time and post-trade surveillance design, position-limit monitoring, and conduct management frameworks that meet both EU and UK expectations. We build practical processes for STOR identification and escalation, suspicious order and transaction handling, and structured market-abuse risk assessments tailored to physical and financial commodities. Our support extends to wall-crossing protocols, insider-list management, and event-driven disclosure obligations, ensuring firms maintain fully auditable controls around inside information and REMIT/MAR requirements. All guidance is benchmarked to current regulatory standards and industry best practice, giving clients a robust, operationally workable compliance environment that is ready for scrutiny from regulators, exchanges, auditors, and counterparties alike.
Platts Window (MOC) Governance
Effective participation in the Platts Market-on-Close process requires a governance framework that is transparent, well-controlled, and defensible to regulators, auditors, and counterparties. Our approach establishes end-to-end MOC protocols, including clear participation rules, pre-trade sign-offs, and defined roles and responsibilities for traders, supervisors, and approvers. We implement strict conduct requirements through watch and restricted lists, conflict-of-interest checks, and communication etiquette standards that reflect benchmark-setting sensitivities. Real-time oversight is applied throughout the window, with structured monitoring procedures, escalation thresholds for unusual market behaviour, and immediate supervisor/Compliance intervention mechanisms. Every interaction within the window is evidence-backed—runbooks, screenshots, trade blotters, timestamped decisions, and market-colour logs—forming a complete, audit-ready evidence pack. Post-window, data flows into surveillance dashboards for pattern analysis, exception testing, and MAR-aligned market-abuse monitoring. Together, these controls create a robust and repeatable MOC governance environment that allows firms to participate confidently and safely in price discovery.
Design–Build–Run Compliance Functions
We design and build the complete compliance operating model, covering everything from policy and procedure frameworks to detailed control libraries, RACI matrices, committee and governance charters, and the supporting MI and KPI packs that allow management to monitor performance and risk effectively. Our work ensures that every control is clearly owned, measurable, and aligned to regulatory expectations. Beyond design, we drive the organisational enablement required to make the framework real—developing training programmes, communication materials, workflow documentation, and change-management plans that embed compliance consistently across the front, middle, and back office. The result is a fully integrated, auditable, and operationally practical compliance environment that supports both business growth and regulatory scrutiny.
Surveillance & Controls
We provide comprehensive support across the full surveillance lifecycle, covering market-abuse monitoring, communications surveillance, trade reconstruction, and the integration of both structured and unstructured data sources. Our approach ensures firms can detect and evidence patterns of behaviour across trading, voice, chat, and operational systems with consistency and auditability. We assist in selecting and implementing the right RegTech solutions—evaluating capabilities such as lexicon libraries, NLP/ML models, cross-channel correlation, and risk-scoring engines—and then calibrating, tuning, and governance-testing them so they genuinely reduce conduct and market-abuse risk rather than generate noise. From surveillance rule design and scenario testing to alert-handling playbooks, workflow optimisation, and ongoing model risk reviews, we ensure your surveillance environment is robust, defensible, and aligned to the realities of commodities trading.
Sanctions, KYC/AML & Trade Controls
We design and implement comprehensive counterparty onboarding and due-diligence standards that combine practical workflows with robust regulatory expectations. This includes risk-based onboarding frameworks, clear scoring methodologies, and sanctions and adverse-media screening processes that are calibrated to the realities of energy and commodities trading. Our approach covers specialised requirements such as sanctions attestations—including G7/EU/UK price-cap frameworks—alongside enhanced reviews of ownership, trade flows, and counterparties in higher-risk jurisdictions. For physical markets, we build and operationalise vessel-vetting and deceptive-shipping controls, leveraging AIS analysis, port-call histories, and behavioural indicators to identify potential evasion risks. We also design ongoing monitoring and periodic refresh programmes that ensure counterparty files remain current and reflective of evolving sanctions, market-abuse, and financial-crime risks. The result is a due-diligence environment that is structured, auditable, and resilient to both regulatory scrutiny and real-world trading pressures.
Audit Readiness & Remediation
We conduct comprehensive compliance health checks and gap analyses that benchmark your frameworks, controls, and governance against regulatory expectations and industry best practice. Our reviews are detailed and evidence-driven, covering policies, surveillance, reporting, conduct risk, onboarding, market-abuse controls, and operational workflows. Where weaknesses or gaps are identified, we design targeted remediation plans with clearly assigned owners, realistic timelines, and measurable deliverables. We also run mock regulatory examinations that simulate the depth and pressure of a real supervisory review—testing documentation, evidencing, decision-making, and front-to-back control effectiveness. Each assessment is supported by structured findings, root-cause analysis, and a defensible audit trail, giving firms a clear and actionable roadmap to achieve compliance readiness and strengthen regulator and auditor confidence