Organizations may turn compliance into a competitive advantage by implementing RegTech solutions. Increased regulatory scrutiny, more restrictions, and higher expectations have all resulted from RegTech. Financial regulators may increase their expectations of corporations to deploy RegTech solutions as the technology matures.
What is RegTech?
RegTech refers to any technology that helps organizations comply with all applicable and industry-specific regulatory standards and ensures that they do so. RegTech can also enable near-real-time monitoring of regulatory changes in the environment, resulting in more efficient, standardized, and transparent reporting and enforcement processes.
RegTech, or regulation technology, is a category of technological solutions that meet the ever-changing, complicated, and dense corporate regulatory framework. Increased attention on social consciousness, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and a reliance on consumer trust for growth has resulted in stringent regulatory action that focuses on customer outcomes and interests, with the goal of holding businesses and their leaders more accountable.
Why do we need RegTech?
Regulatory compliance is ingrained in financial institutions’ DNA. Within a regulated financial institution (FI), no action may be made without taking into account several compliance factors. Failure to meet regulatory duties can result in not just punitive action, but also disastrous consequences for society as a whole, potentially affecting a country’s economic performance. Depending on the product, service, or jurisdiction, different regulations apply. Firms must tread a fine line between enterprise-wide compliance management and more compartmentalized approaches. The right approach isn’t always obvious; additionally, regulations and guidelines are modified on a regular basis; correctly tracking these changes might mean the difference between compliant activity and budget and reputational damage.
However, as enterprises attempt to interpret regulations, create new rules, meet present standards, and respond to regulators, monitoring and applying regulations is a time-consuming and costly process. Technology and compliance are inextricably linked, and as technology advances, so are the rules that govern it: For example, robo-advisers present a set of new norms and guidelines. Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP) are all advanced technologies that are evolving at a rapid pace, and rules are altering to keep up. Similarly, technology has simply risen to meet the challenges of supporting regulators and compliance teams in fulfilling and implementing requirements. The world of compliance is evolving thanks to RegTech.
What are the Top Regtech Solution Areas?
The financial industry, in particular, has been subjected to more complex regulatory requirements that need more traceable, responsible, and auditable reporting systems. According to the Ernst & Young Global RegTech Industry Benchmark Report 2019, the top function area for RegTech solutions across organizations is data gathering and reporting. As a result, many businesses have embraced and implemented RegTech solutions that can help them enhance how they collect data and report in order to stay compliant and demonstrate compliance with changing regulatory requirements.
Benefits of Regtech
1. Marketing Streamlining and Auditing
Many businesses operate in industries that have stringent marketing requirements. This usually means that ads must be genuine and cannot be deceptive, misleading, or unfair. Furthermore, other industries have much more stringent criteria. Any product’s health benefits, for example, must be backed up by strong research. Furthermore, financial marketing in the United Kingdom must be fair and not overemphasize benefits while omitting significant concerns. However, errors do happen. As a result, businesses must develop rigorous, auditable processes for controlling, approving, reviewing, and obtaining advertising materials. This process may be largely automated and streamlined by using RegTech tools.
2. Improving Risk Control
Companies can detect, manage, and prevent negative risks by utilizing suitable RegTech solutions. Non-compliant trades, fraud, market abuse, legal threats, unforeseen events, and others are examples of these risks. When questionable behaviors are found, these solutions often notify the necessary workers so that they may be dealt with quickly. This is crucial since how swiftly a company responds to events is frequently criticized.
3. Increased efficiency in terms of both time and money
RegTech solutions aid in the reduction of compliance expenses and effort (time). Companies can spend more money and energy in other areas if the compliance process is made simpler and less expensive. How do RegTech solutions help to increase efficiency? Robotic process automation (RPA), intelligent automation, real-time data monitoring, and other technologies can help.
4. Accountability and accuracy have both improved
Manual procedures that are siloed have a lot of problems. Frequently, not everyone participating in the compliance process is aware of the current state of a compliance activity or who is responsible for the deliverable. Furthermore, some compliance duties may fall between the cracks and be ignored, or they may take considerably longer than they should. Individuals (and the firm as a whole) can be held accountable for compliance responsibilities using RegTech technologies, ensuring that nothing is overlooked.
Conclusion
In conclusion, RegTech offers in-house teams the ability to replace manual reporting and compliance processes with built-in workflows, automation tools, visual analytics, data capture, and cloud computing. As a result, legal and compliance departments will be able to gain the essential agility to keep up with an increasingly complicated regulatory environment while also enhancing their operational operations. To learn more about the future of RegTech, our Fintech360 or THINK e-learning platform are filled with courses to gain an understanding on how to prevent payment fraud and financial crimes by using the existing solution tools! or just for £29.99 GBP, you can purchase our Opportunities and Threats in RegTech Course where you learn about the digital opportunities and risks of the compliance industry.
