RegTech Leadership Forum: Launch Roundtable

The inaugural roundtable meeting of the RegTech Leadership Forum will brought together a range of stakeholders in leadership roles across regulation, risk and compliance in financial services and FinTech.

During this first session session we considered the current and emerging regulatory landscape, with consideration of challenges relating to the volume and complexity of regulation, frequency of change, integration of frameworks, policy and organisational adaptation.

The session included a keynote from the FCA Innovation Team on the emerging regulatory landscape from a UK context, considering challenges and opportunities for innovation, followed by an enhanced focus RegTech by Design and demand led innovation.

Keynote 1: Colin Payne, Head of Innovation, Financial Conduct Authority

Keynote 2: RegTech by Design: A Scottish perspective. Devraj Basu, University of Strathclyde

The keynotes were then followed by an open group discussion considering the core challenges facing the financial services industry in relation to regulation, compliance and the adoption of RegTech solutions.

Key takeaways from the session included:

-The outlook from the Financial Conduct Authority around RegTech is looking extremely optimistic, with the regulator now adopting a “tech positive’ approach to how it regulates with more speed, impact and efficiency. Technology should be seen as an opportunity more so than a risk.

-The volume and complexity of regulations isn’t going away, particularly with the rapid rate of new technological developments in areas like AI and Quantum. Strong UK regulation is needed in these areas to help set the bar and standards for UK RegTechs to be able to easily scale into international markets.

-There are a number of challenges facing financial institutions in relation ‘RegTech Readiness’, including data readiness, data governance, and balancing risk appetite with the need to innovate.

-Unlocking growth requires and an ecosystem approach to challenges, solutions and and adoption which is demand led and focused on commercialisation.

-RegTech’s need support with commercialisation, not just product development and innovation.

-Achieving growth and impact means backing the scale-ups we have, and creating the right conditions for more to thrive through effective FinTech partnerships.

-The talent and the range of the RegTech ecosystem here in Scotland and the wider UK is world class – how do we bring all of this together for maximum impact?

-There are too many FinTechs working in silos or in competition – true impact requires a convergence of technologies and innovators, as well as a convergence of sectors.