RegTech Intelligence 
In answering the Government’s demand for the UK to become a leader in the RegTech field, the FCA issued a call for input in November.
Given that JWG have been supporting the development of RegTech – via this publication and our other activities – for a decade now, we thought it would be helpful to jot down a few thoughts.
After many drafts and countless discussions with the community, we submitted our 10-page response last month and are pleased to have been selected by the FCA to host a roundtable on the topic.
On 11 March we will be debating the best way forward for RegTech in a critical area: getting the industry to good RegTech for OTC trading.
The agenda will cover:
- What are the biggest challenges to applying new technology to fast moving regulations?
- How should the regulator help frame the debate in the most useful way?
- What do industry professionals most need from the debate?
- How can the FCA best support the needs of technologists in firms and vendors?
- What are the most important next steps?
We will be leveraging JWG’s response, which expressed that:
- The existing RegTech market is huge: approximately £15 billion per annum*, or 0.7% of GDP
- Both new and proven tools can be employed to make sense of the technology implications of regulation
- The debate must be reframed as a ‘RegTech commons’ for the market to take off
- The FCA’s role in RegTech is crucial as the UK is a global FinTech hub
- There are 10 actions that we recommend the FCA take in order to facilitate the adoption of RegTech.
Want to find out how you can participate and discuss your views? Contact blythe@jwg-it.eu
Clearly, RegTech isn’t just a discussion about OTC trading, though – there’s a lot of other ground to cover. Accordingly, we will be continuing our research on the key regulatory challenges and how new technologies can address them.
In the meantime, you’ll start to see more pieces appearing on RegTechFS which use our response to articulate the key issues for the RegTech domains. The aim, of course is to facilitate the necessary dialogue about how we can all meet our regulatory obligations in a better, faster, cheaper and safer manner.
We will also post an article summarising the takeaways from this roundtable … watch this space.
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*This figure has been amended subsequent to the publication of JWG’s response to the FCA’s call for input on supporting the development and adoption of RegTech based upon further review of the FinTech Futures report. The estimate was based upon the following passage in the FinTech futures report: “The ever evolving nature of disruptive and emerging technologies means it is impossible to wholly predict the future economic benefits of financial technologies (FinTech). It is currently estimated to generate £20bn in annual revenue in the UK.36 Both the financial services and technology sectors contribute significantly to the UK economy. Financial services paid £65bn in tax in 2012/1337 and account for roughly 9.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) (14.5% including related services such as legal and consultancy38). The UK has the largest financial services sector in the world.39 Similarly the UK’s prominent technology sector contributes enormously to GDP, the internet industry alone accounting for roughly 8.4%.40 Technology and financial services are interrelated, banking and securities institutions spending $485bn (£319bn) on IT in 2014.41 Strength in both these areas may help to build a sector which broadly encompasses both financial services and technology, although these individual strengths may not guarantee success in FinTech.” Our initial estimates were based on the premise that this was a UK only figure, however after further analysis of footnote 41, it is clear that this is a global figure. For this reason, the figure has been revised as stated above.