About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

General Data Protection Regulation Calls for Increased Investment in Data Security and Governance

Subscribe to our newsletter

Paul Nemitz, the director for fundamental rights in the justice directorate of the European Commission, has warned companies operating in the EU that they must invest in data security to ensure they can demonstrate compliance with the data privacy by design and security elements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and thus reduce potential fines for breaches.

Speaking at a recent conference in Brussels, Nemitz said GDPR will require many companies to increase investment in data security, which will not only lead to compliance, but also competitive gains in the market.

GDPR comes into force on May 25, 2018 and is designed to harmonise data privacy laws across Europe, protect EU citizens’ data privacy and reshape the way organisations across the region approach data privacy. While the regulation sustains the key principles of data privacy established in a 1995 directive, it extends many of these and clarifies ambiguous territorial applicability by stating that it applies to all companies processing personal data of data subjects residing in the EU regardless of company location.

The impact of GDPR on financial services firms will be significant, requiring firms to reconsider how they build data management systems and manage personal data. Those that do this well and take a proactive approach to compliance should benefit from improved customer communication, strategic data management and a higher level of trust in the market. For those that breach compliance, the stakes are high – reputational damage and fines of up to 4% of annual turnover or €20 million – making it essential that companies respond to GDPR with a data governance framework that can support effective design and also provide evidence of the organisation’s commitment to privacy by design and default.

To find out more about approaches to GDPR compliance, join A-Team Group’s webinar, GDPR: How to build a data protection framework, on October 18, 2016. The webinar will be hosted by A-Team editor Sarah Underwood and joined by Koen Van Duyse, subject matter expert on regulatory compliance at Collibra, and Dennis Slattery, designer of the Data Management Agenda for Privacy at EDMworks.

The webinar will discuss:

  • Requirements of GDPR
  • Challenges of implementation
  • How to build a data protection framework
  • Tools to support data governance
  • How to ensure ongoing compliance
Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Are Your Legacy Voice Recordings a Compliance Time Bomb?

Recent enforcement actions underscore the importance of maintaining accurate, secure and up-to-date voice and electronic communication. For some organisations, legacy voice recording systems are not at or beyond end-of-life, posing significant compliance, operational and financial risks. These outdated systems often fail to meet evolving regulatory expectations around data authenticity, retention, and accessibility. Delaying action increases...

BLOG

Compliance Innovation at Droit: Bridging Symbolic Logic and GenAI

Compliance teams frequently face overwhelming regulatory shifts like those imposed by MiFID II or EMIR Refit. For many firms, understanding exactly how a new mandate impacts day-to-day operations can feel overwhelming – unless, of course, you can assess the operational impacts and immediately trace those mandates back to the source text itself. Since its founding...

EVENT

RegTech Summit London

Now in its 9th year, the RegTech Summit in London will bring together the RegTech ecosystem to explore how the European capital markets financial industry can leverage technology to drive innovation, cut costs and support regulatory change.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2025 – Thirteenth Edition

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a unique and practical guide to capital markets regulation, regulatory change, and the data and data management requirements of compliance across Europe, the UK, US and Asia-Pacific. This year’s edition lands at a moment of accelerating regulatory divergence and intensifying data focused supervision. Inside,...