Pushing for the RegTech Revolution Removing the barriers to adoption in FinCrime

In a recent report, the City of London Corporation has argued that the financial services sector needs to leverage new regulatory technologies (RegTech) to meet their obligations and fight financial crime. The report follows a succession of other statements from leading regulators in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific, all making similar points.

However, as the City of London also notes, the take up of RegTech – though comparatively better in the FinCrime space than other areas – is still limited overall. A lack of practical rather than rhetorical regulator support has been proposed as one cause for this, and there are likely to be other barriers too. Some of the most innovative RegTechs are relatively small or young firms that find it difficult to satisfy the risk requirements of large and mature financial institutions. Even when the solution on offer is a good fit, it can sometimes be impractical for either side to work together.

In this session, the panellists will provide a pragmatic view on the state of RegTech adoption in the industry and seek to get to the root causes of its currently slow pace, looking at regulatory, commercial as well as technological points of friction. The panel will also look at ways the current initiatives to support RegTech, such as regulatory sandboxes and ‘Tech Sprints’, might be enhanced and expanded in order to ensure the sector meets its full potential in the future.