The Future of Compliance Regulatory Adherence

My career had not so much been in tech sector but the capital and investment sector, first working in investment banking in payments processing and then in financial services advocacy in superannuation, financial markets, education and venture capital and private equity. I always had a general passion for standards, education, diversity and ESG.

In early 2017, during a sabbatical of short term stints at CSIRO’s Data61, Telstra’s muru-D, AIIA, Digivier and at Microsoft, I inched closer to the tech juncture and happily found myself at the door of a newly formed RegTech Association who had a handful of members and big plans. Actually, there was no door, just a website, a database of names from the launch and lots of appetites to challenge the way that RegTech vendors approached their large and complex client base. Since early 2017, the RTA has grown to be a connected community of 120 organisations from across the globe. Organisations such as CBA, Westpac, Bank of Queensland, Toyota Finance, Voltbank are all members as well as large-scale technology companies such as SAS and Microsoft. Ninety of the members are founder-led RegTech firms.

Despite the traction achieved so far, there are still challenges in adopting RegTech. Compliance and risk management processes are deeply embedded and touch many internal hands within regulated entities. For a large organisation to be aligned with the right appetite, budget and business imperatives when regulations are constantly changing, coupled with choosing the right RegTech solution at the right time is a high mountain to climb.

Many RegTechs are very small businesses who find it challenging when confronted with the sometimes onerous procurement, cloud-unfriendly environments, demand for free proof of concepts until the product is proved and general IT security all creating hurdles.

This is where the RTA adds value. We help everyone to understand each other, develop standards that will assist them in doing business together and bring the regulators into the conversation. We show the potential opportunities and connect up the dots.

Over the next six months, we should expect our first industry research to be completed. This will measure for the first time, how far RegTech has penetrated and with whom. We have also seen the industry coming together to develop a series of checklists to help the buyers and sellers create commerce.

There’s a fantastic opportunity in RegTech globally. It’s predicted that within five years RegTech firms will outnumber FinTechs. This is simply because RegTech can be applied beyond financial services to any regulated industry vertical such as Telco, Government, Health Services, Agriculture, Education and Real Estate.