RegTech Issues 2017 - a series of interviews

September 2017 Kompli-Global

Do regulatory authorities do enough to help RegTechs define standards and guidelines for their solutions?

Well, getting regulators to define guidelines and standards is quite difficult in relation to reg-tech companies. They can’t really be seen to favour any particular company over another because of their role. It would distort competition in the marketplace and that wouldn’t be good. Also, if the company subsequently turned out to be a company which didn’t deliver, they could open themselves to liability and that wouldn’t be good.

So, whilst they do have guidelines and standards, they can’t be guidelines and standards which are necessarily just for reg-tech companies.

What must reg-techs and the authorities do to encourage greater adoption of regulatory technology?

I think the short answer to that is that they need to talk to each other quite a lot. They need to get together and determine what the problems are that the financial institution has, and how the reg-tech company can address that problem, rather than the reg-tech companies talking about the solution that they have. Rather a lot of… There’s an awful lot of cynicism in the market at the moment about reg-tech because people do tend to overclaim and that’s unfortunate because it spoils the market for the rest of us.

Will the successful adoption of reg-tech be dependent on collaboration and partnerships?

Absolutely. Collaboration and partnerships will be key to the success of reg-tech, particularly partnerships, because without partners and without people who can help and guide the reg-tech in the right way, they cannot succeed, and they must try and approach the market with a partner if they possibly can.

Collaboration is more difficult in the sense that it’s getting a number of companies to work towards a defined end and I think that where there is no commercial benefit for a reg-tech company that can be more tricky. But partnerships are absolutely essential.