Surveillance RegTech 2022

The great work-from-home experiment forced traders from the office and digital surveillance teams into overdrive. RegTech can provide a path forward through serious legal obstacles that stand in the way of effective oversight. However, good compliance is not just about the tech and we need collaborative action to make surveillance RegTech fit for purpose. The


Gentrifying The Wild West

Can suptech take DeFi to the next level? As technology-driven decentralised finance (or DeFi) grows in popularity and market value, it appears that a battle is brewing between DeFi protocols and regulators. But can technological tools in the hands of regulators head this off at the pass? A reasoned, transitional approach to compliance, along with


The UK’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) has commissioned 11 skilled persons reviews under Section 166 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 into firms’ regulatory reporting in the last two quarters. The PRA commissioned nine prudential s166 reviews of deposit takers in the fourth quarter 2019/20 (December through February), according to publicly available information.


FS Compliance officers have been hit with an unprecedented deluge of 3,021 COVID-19 alerts 2 months into the pandemic, which JWG forecasts to be a total of 15,695 documents by year end.   Regulators expect firms to be able to navigate these difficult circumstances while delivering fair outcomes for customers and complying with existing rules. That’s one of the clear messages in these 3,000 plus regulatory updates.  Better RegTech tooling is


Brexit: is equivalence the answer?

On Wednesday 14 September, the EU Financial Affairs Sub-Committee heard evidence from Mr. Simon Gleeson, Partner at Clifford Chance, and Mr. Peter Snowdon, Partner at Norton Rose Fulbright, for its Brexit Inquiry into financial services. Over the course of an hour, the discussion focused on how UK firms might hope to invoke rights of ‘equivalence’


On 24 March, as part of the UK’s effort to set rules to transpose the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II), the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) set out its proposals in its first consultation paper. The application deadline for MiFID II/R has been delayed by one-year to 3 January 2018, with just the European


Continuing on from part 1, where we discussed the European regulator’s priorities for Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) and Trade Repositories (TRs) for 2016, we now look at the nature and focus of the work the regulator plans to carry out this year to promote supervisory convergence. In October 2015, the European Securities and Markets Authority


JWG analysis. Mark Carney recently declared the ‘age of irresponsibility’ within the fixed income, currency and commodities (FICC) markets to be over.  Just over a year ago, the UK Government introduced the Fair and Effective Markets Review (FEMR) in response to the FX and LIBOR scandals.  The large scale misconduct and collusion had damaged public


Today, JWG have published their much anticipated analysis report, ‘G20 FS reform: will you survive or thrive?’. The report surveys regulatory efforts from 131 regulatory bodies which have produced approximately 50,000 documents since 2009.  It finds that the volume, pace and complexity of deciding how to comply with a continually evolving regulatory agenda are staggering:


JWG analysis. We learnt something this month.  The reason Europe calls it a regulatory ‘hearing’ is that it is an opportunity to hear views from both regulators and the market.  Of course, that’s just part of the experience as many other senses are triggered when 400 people are locked in a basement for 2 days,


JWG analysis. When the requirement brought about by the German high frequency trading act to tag algorithms comes into force in April of this year, market participants may well feel hamstrung by the complexity of the regime.  And while the regulatory goal of improving market surveillance and reducing systemic risk may be valid, some might


MiFID II: now under starter’s orders

JWG analysis. The first 700 of 18,000 pages of MiFID II texts have now been published, a little more than a month after the European Commission announced agreement in the trilogue process, but this milestone foreshadows a confused standards landscape that will stretch forward to implementation of the regulations and directives in 2016. For those


Check your SYSC benchmarks

The Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (SEC, FINRA, NYSE) has released an assessment of 19 firms regarding their controls to prevent misuse of material, non-public information. While not legally binding, this development is important because this is the first comprehensive statement in years regarding a regulatory view of a firms systems and controls for