The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has published a call for input as to how technology can make things easier for firms to meet their regulatory reporting requirements. Incorporating Regtech can also streamline the process for the regulator while improving the overall quality of the information provided. All regulated firms submit data to the FCA based on their financial activities. These regulatory reports are critical to their ability to deliver effective supervision, monitor markets and detect financial crime.
Christopher Woolard, FCA’s Executive Director of Strategy and Competition, said that tech is a powerful shaper of financial regulation;
“Our TechSprints bring people from across the financial services world together to share their collective knowledge to solve common problems. We look forward to working with industry participants in the coming months to drive these ideas forward.”
The FCA said that it regularly explores how tech ca help reduce the regulatory burden and one of the methods is via a “TechSprint” that bring together financial services providers, technology companies and subject matter experts to develop solutions to regulatory challenges.
In November 2017, the FCA and the Bank of England, held a two-week TechSprint to examine how technology can make the current system of regulatory reporting more accurate, efficient and consistent.
At the TechSprint, the FCA reports that participants successfully developed a “proof of concept” which could make regulatory reporting requirements machine-readable and executable. This means that firms could map the reporting requirements directly to the data that they hold, creating the potential for automated, straight-through processing of regulatory returns.
Every year the FCA says it receives over 500,000 scheduled regulatory reports from firms, as well as additional ad hoc reports. Clearly, this is a process that can benefit from further automation.
The Call for Input asks for views on how the FCA can improve this process. Parties may submit feedback until 20 June 2018. The FCA expects to publish the feedback later this summer.