Capital markets specialist Sensiple is bringing its regtech product SETREGA for MiFID II, SFTR and EMIR compliance and reporting to the FR2 data centre in Frankfurt as part of an agreement with Transaction Network Services (TNS). Sensiple will use TNS’s managed hosting, colocation and connectivity service to give market participants fast, secure and efficient access to its regulatory data processing and reporting systems. Sensiple on TNS’s Software-as-a-Service solution replaces Sensiple’s existing client-hosted model.

The US House of Representatives has passed a bipartisan bill requiring the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to study the provision of investment research for small issuers. It will require the SEC to explore a broad range of issues including among others the demand for research by institutional and retail investors; the availability of research; the volume of research over time; current competition in the research market; the costs of research; potential conflicts of interest in the production and distribution process; and the impact of different payment mechanisms. The bill has now been passed to the Senate for approval.

Identity verification specialist Melissa has launched Melissa KYC, a mobile-based unified compliance toolset providing end-to-end identity verification including ID card and document authentication, biometrics, and liveness confirmation. The app claims to capture identity documentation in under three minutes using facial recognition technology, while its verification feature uses real-time, multi-sourced data to authenticate each submission.

The global RegTech market is expected to reach $55.28 billion by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 52.8% over the period, according to new data from Grand View Research. According to the research, the risk and compliance management segment generated the highest revenue in 2018, anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 49.7% over the forecast period. The regulatory intelligence segment accounted for over 12% of market share in 2018 and is one of the fastest growing sectors in the industry. North America is expected to lead growth with an expansion of 51.6% between 2019-25.

According to data provided by research and intelligence firm Tracxn, private investments into the Indian RegTech space have increased by over five times so far in 2019 to reach an estimated $43.5 million, compared to $7.26 million in 2018. Notable RegTech start-ups to receive funding include Simility, CrediWatch, Digio, Fintellix, DotAI, NextKYC, Credible Ninja and Idfy.in among twenty others providing solutions ranging from e-KYC verification, fraud detection, financial scoring, KYC compliance, AI-based financial risk management to anti-money laundering and CRM tools.

Austrian banking group Raffeisen Bank International (RBI) via its corporate venture capital unit Elevator Ventures has joined UNIQA Ventures to invest in business verification and KYC provider kompany, while previous investors, including the European Super Angels Club (ESAC), have increased their stakes. kompany is an alumnus of the Elevator Lab Program and became a group solution provider last year. The firm combines Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotic process automation and blockchain technology to deliver next generation Business KYC solutions. The service simplifies and audit-proofs business verification and client onboarding for financial institutions.

Bloomberg has acquired RegTek.Solutions, a specialist in global regulatory reporting software solutions. The firm, which provides modular software solutions built around actionable regulatory intelligence, will be integrated with Bloomberg’s Regulatory Reporting Hub (RHUB), as well as Bloomberg’s enterprise data management and trading systems. The acquisition will combine Bloomberg’s data enrichment and reporting capabilities with RegTek.Solutions’ quality and control tools across a broad range of global reporting jurisdictions. Clients will have access to a fully electronic reporting workflow including transaction reporting eligibility, data validation, enrichment and reconciliation. Further news to follow.

ABN Amro has confirmed that it could face possible money laundering fines, following an order from the Dutch central bank to review all its transactions for possible money laundering or financial crime activities. The news comes after fellow Dutch bank ING was hit with a $900 million fine in September 2018 for similar issues.

The SmartStream Reference Data Utility (RDU) has implemented changes to its MiFID II Reference Data Service and Systematic Internaliser (SI) Registry to accommodate Brexit. For the MiFID II service, SmartStream RDU will make both ESMA and FCA data available, either as an integrated delivery or separately. It will also support ESMA and FCA pre- and post-trade reporting through its cloud-based REST API service. The SI registry has been proactively enhanced to indicate whether an individual SI status is relevant to ESMA reporting, FCA reporting or both.

Australia’s biggest bank has seen profits slump by 8.1% following regulatory and compliance costs of over $1 billion amid a series of scandals, lawsuits and regulatory investigations. According to CEO Matt Comyn, Commonwealth is currently handling a number of “regulatory and risk projects.” The bank is working with RegTech firm Red Marker to implement a real-time compliance tool to automate manual processes. It is also experimenting with voice detection technologies and has built an engine that can run sequences based on existing data sets to identify compliance trends and issues.