The intersection of regulation, quality and innovation – the only way forward
Published on 25th January 2022Financial services is a global industry, and how regulation, quality and innovation intersect can have global implications.
With competition in financial services remaining pressurised, firms are continually seeking out new ways to relieve that pressure. Firms’ offerings are a combination of the people, processes and technologies as these are key to driving innovation and continuous improvements and therefore achieving a competitive edge.
REGULATION
Regulators can have a very positive effect on innovation, pushing for new ways to fix old problems to protect both the financial services sector and their customers. The way firms innovate will depend on their vision and how they find opportunities, which may be determined by whether regulations are prescriptive or proscriptive.
Regulators are, in fact, part of the innovation journey for the financial services sector and they have continued to push for modernisation, automation, oversight and the technology to assist the growth and stability of the sector. In the area of regulatory technology, or ‘Regtech’, some of the regulators have supported ‘sandboxes’, a regulator supervised, safe space allowing Regtech firms to more freely experiment with their new products and services.
Recent initiatives by regulators have seen a huge increase in regulation around ESG (environmental, social & governance). There is also increased regulatory activity in the Asia Pacific markets echoing what we have seen happen in the North American and European markets.
QUALITY
Quality is part of the competitive landscape, how one firm’s offering stacks up against another’s; how great is the difference in products, services and the whole package. Is the difference enough to be perceived as a higher quality offering or best quality provider.
To achieve higher quality levels, firms invest in their regulatory compliance operations including training personnel, re-defining or improving workflow and implementing auto-routing of data, or seeking out and integrating new technologies to support processes.
Quality data in regulatory compliance is about having the pertinent data at your fingertips, and this requires a taxonomy or categorisation of data to match a firm’s own requirements. Data needs to be ingested into a system, sorted and made ready for the user to ensure high quality data and high quality operations.
INNOVATION
Financial services have grown from a traditional bricks and mortar business to a highly digital one with sophisticated operational optimisation strategies supported by specialist technologies and services. These new business models push for enhanced productivity and quality while continuing to lower costs.
Innovation is driven by need and the regulators need the markets to be stable and firms need to remain competitive.
If you are interesting in learning more about how we are helping our clients innovate their regulatory compliance, please get in touch with us.