The Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), has launched a new ‘Open RegTech’ initiative, which aims to expand the successful open collaboration model built between financial institutions, fintech and technology firms to regulators and RegTech companies.
Announced at the organization’s annual Open Source Strategy Forum (OSSF) held virtually in conjunction with the Linux Foundation earlier this month, the news accompanies the largest number of ‘commits’ (the smallest unit of contribution) on its open source projects since its inception, a growth of 40% on the previous record.
FINOS also confirmed a new codebase contribution from Deutsche Bank in the form of the Symphony Java Toolkit, along with the OpenMAMA project, led by JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and several other FINOS members.
“When we started the foundation two years ago, we couldn’t have predicted such a groundswell of support from the financial services industry for our community and are extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished,” says Gabriele Columbro, executive director, FINOS, whose mission is to foster adoption of open source, open standards, and collaborative software development practices in financial services. “This is just the beginning. By establishing an open source model for the regulatory community, building a strong project portfolio and adding active contributions from financial institutions, we have a unique opportunity to tackle other long-standing industry challenges.
“Open source in financial services is a positive-sum game,” he adds. “Not only does it help industry consortia and regulators resolve important and complex issues at the crossroads of policy and technology, but it also provides technology and fintech companies with the ability to generate business opportunities through a commercial open source ecosystem, especially for those who will enjoy a first-mover advantage by engaging early in communities like FINOS.”
The FINOS board also recently established the use of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to bring together financial services stakeholders to define problem statements in specific areas that can be tackled through open source collaboration. The most recent of these was the Regulation Innovation SIG, chaired by Ian Hollowbread, Head of RegTech at ING Labs, and supported by AIR, the Alliance for Innovative Regulation. The focus of the group is to create open source solutions for regulatory and compliance issues in financial services.
“Global challenges need global solutions. That’s why at ING, we collaborate with others, both on existing platforms and on new ones we have yet to create,” says Hollowbread. “Working together with open source communities, we can achieve greater coordination and bring standardization to regulatory processes to help proactively protect the financial services sector at large.”
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