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

RegTech Summit Keynote Discusses How to Cut Compliance Costs by 15-20%

Subscribe to our newsletter

A-Team Group’s recent RegTech Summit Virtual got off to a cracking start with a keynote presented by Niresh Rajah, managing director and head of data in the RegTech and digital assurance practice at Grant Thornton, and covering everything from the evolution of RegTech 2.0 to driving value out of the technology.

An early poll asking summit delegates whether their organisation used RegTech to solve regulatory challenges showed 45% of respondents intending to use RegTech very soon, 36% using RegTech successfully, 9% having not used RegTech in the past, and 9% with no plans to use RegTech in the future. The majority move towards RegTech was reflected in a market forecast shared by Rajah and showing growth from $2.8 billion in 2019 to $55 billion by 2025.

“RegTech 1.0 was about technologies. RegTech 2.0 is additive and enhanced by technologies such as cloud, application programming interfaces and distributed ledger technology,” Rajah said, noting the drivers of RegTech 2.0 as increased automation, the need to improve data models, and regulators promoting RegTech as the way forward.

With about 300 RegTech providers in the UK and about 500 in Europe, Rajah went on to discuss the growing maturity of RegTech, and emphasised the need to match RegTech deployment with changes to target operating models. When this is done, financial institutions can reduce the cost of compliance by 15-20%.

He said: “Bringing in RegTech needs a clear strategy as well as changes to the operating model, governance, responsibilities and training. You can’t have one without the other.”

Rajah went on to describe Grant Thornton’s approach to RegTech, including a RegTech taxonomy covering different type of software, a catalogue of about 100 best in class RegTechs, and recognition of more mature solutions such as horizon scanning and optimisation, regulatory reporting, regulatory interpretation, and financial crime.

The consultancy has also developed a method to drive value out of RegTech that includes looking at regulations and problems that must be mapped to solutions, evaluating and selecting the right software using a catalogue and taxonomy, and implementing correctly using proofs of concept and testing. Rajah also set out prerequisites for RegTech software enablement and noted the post-implementation need for a RegTech assurance period to understand where value is coming from – you can find out more here.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: Best practices for compliance with EU Market Abuse Regulation

Date: 18 June 2024 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes EU Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) came into force in July 2016, rescinding the previous Market Abuse Directive and replacing it with a significantly extended scope of regulatory obligations. Eight years later, and amid constant change in capital markets regulation,...

BLOG

Regulations for UK Digital Securities Sandbox Come into Force on 8 January 2024

Regulations for the UK’s first Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS) will come into force on 8 January 2024, enabling financial market infrastructures and new entrants to experiment with developing technologies in a more flexible legal and regulatory environment than the existing framework. To date, the government says it has received 19 expressions of interest from financial...

EVENT

TradingTech Summit London

Now in its 13th year the TradingTech Summit London brings together the European trading technology capital markets industry and examines the latest changes and innovations in trading technology and explores how technology is being deployed to create an edge in sell side and buy side capital markets financial institutions.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2019/2020 – Seventh Edition

Welcome to A-Team Group’s best read handbook, the Regulatory Data Handbook, which is now in its seventh edition and continues to grow in terms of the number of regulations covered, the detail of each regulation and the impact that all the rules and regulations will have on data and data management at your institution. This...