The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) New Zealand has confirmed that it will engage with regulated firms and market participants exclusively via remote technology for the foreseeable future. “Our offices remain open and we encourage people to contact us with concerns or questions, as well as any suggestions on how we can assist you,” said the regulator in a statement.

Compliance.ai has announced comprehensive coverage for insurance-related regulatory content on its platform, which automates the complex steps within the regulatory compliance process for banks, financial services and insurance companies. The move comes in response to a rapid influx of new claims and actions in the US as a result of COVID-19, especially in the US, where insurance companies are struggling to keep track of the number and complexity of regulatory changes they must comply with. “We’ve found many regulatory changes addressing banking, financial services and Insurance are related, and our clients have requested coverage across that spectrum,” says Kayvan Alikhani, CEO and co-founder.

ICE Futures US has granted temporary relief to intermediaries from the obligation to comply with certain requirements, including from the requirement to make and keep records of oral communications, as long as a written record is provided instead. The exchange has also granted relief from any requirement to record the date and time by time-stamp or other timing device, provided that a record of the date and time is kept to the nearest minute, for example by instant message or email. Previously, the exchange confirmed that floor brokers and impacted intermediaries would be allowed to work from different locations.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has supported these measures, issuing its own no-action letters confirming relief from both oral communications recording and time-stamping for brokers, swap dealers, forex dealers, and members of designated contract markets and swap execution facilities.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions has acquired Arizona-based Emailage, a fraud prevention and risk management solutions provider that provides fraud risk scoring solutions based on email intelligence. Its fraud prevention solutions assess fraud risks by utilizing email address metadata, a differentiated global contributory network, and machine learning algorithms. Emailage, which has established market presence in the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific, will form part of the Business Services Group of LexisNexis. The two firms already have an established commercial partnership offering email risk assessment to global clients.

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has relaxed rules around voice and telephone recording for swap execution facilities up until the end of June, along with relief to designated contract markets regarding audit trail and related requirements over the same period. The spread of coronavirus has caused compliance with certain CFTC requirements to be particularly challenging or impossible because of displacement of personnel from normal business sites due to social distancing and other measures.

“These prudent, targeted, and temporary actions will help facilitate orderly trading and liquidity in our derivatives markets,” said CFTC Chairman Heath P. Tarbert.

The European trade repository REGIS-TR will collaborate with GLMX, provider of pre- and post-trade technology solutions for repurchase agreements and secured lending, to provide an interoperable, full-service reporting solution for SFTR requirements. Together, they will offer a hosted solution that leverages existing industry data workflows to lower cost and operational burden of SFTR. GLMX has been testing with REGIS-TR and market participants to design a straight-through processing reporting solution, and clients will be able to use GLMX’s pre- and post-trade platform services and then delegate their reporting to GLMX to report their securities finance transactions to REGIS-TR under SFTR.

The UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) is believed to have appointed PwC to undertake a “skilled person’s report” on Goldman Sachs to scrutinise the quality of its regulatory reporting out of its London offices. The move comes in response to concerns around its lack of oversight, and the quality of information being supplied to the PRA. Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are also being assessed, while Citi was fined a record £44 million recently for inadequate internal controls and governance arrangements relating to regulatory reporting obligations.

TONIK, a Singapore-based pure play licensed digital bank, has selected the Essentials Anti-Money Laundering solutions suite from NICE Actimize to support the development of a secure banking environment for its new customer base following approval to establish a regulated bank in the Philippines. One of the first digital-only banks in the region in the Southeast Asian region, TONIK will use AML Essentials (a cloud-based offering that is built upon NICE Actimize’s end-to-end anti-money laundering platform) to address the challenges of digital transformation. The product suite includes Transaction Monitoring, Customer Due Diligence, and Sanctions Screening capabilities.

The HKMA (Hong Kong Monetary Authority) is inviting tenders for the provision of professional services to help it facilitate the adoption of RegTech by the banking industry, with services expected to commence in May 2020. Submission details can be found in the tender document, which can be obtained upon request by email to regtech@hkma.gov.hk.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s securities markets’ regulator, has launched a consultation on draft technical standards on the provision of investment services and activities in the European Union (EU) by third-country firms under MiFIR and MiFID II, which will specify the information that third-country firms must provide to ESMA for the registration of third-country firms and for the information that third-country firms have to report annually. The closing date for responses from stakeholders is 31 March 2020.