Conversations with the great and the good
In the name of collaboration and connecting people from around the world, I have had a lot of interesting stuff coming virtually to my lockdown office this month. Some of the themes that stood out from these were:-
1. Collaboration is key to solving Regulatory change challenges,
2. Taxonomy, Ontology & Standards create a common understanding which supports the interoperability and sustainability of solutions
3. Talking about RegTech is one thing, but actually doing something is another, and I am encouraged by the conversations I am hearing which point to 2022 being a year of action.
The chat:-
Shane Rigby, an ex-colleague from way back in our Barclays Capital days is now doing some cool stuff as CEO at LIXI Ltd in Sydney. Lixi have standardised the way lenders communicate, simplifying the Broker Lender interaction in a cost effective way. Originally devised via a collaboration with some of the Australian Banks, It has now evolved as a not for profit organisation providing a wide range of standards available for a range of transactions such as Credit applications, Mortgage insurance, Valuations, Settlements, Commissions etc. Whilst more of a FinTech solution, the application of standards providing a common understanding in the market will ultimately support better regulatory management and compliance, and Standards is widely recognised as a key blockstone for RegTech.
I also had an opportunity to speak with Kiwi returnee Adrienne Muir, Group COO and Non Executive Director of VoxSmart, a rapidly expanding player in the Financial Services communications surveillance market, whilst primarily a Fintech solution, again we see the cross over into the RegTech domain as regulators increase demand on Financial Services to ensure the conduct of their business. Amongst a wider product offering, Voxsmart supports the compliance management of mobile devices having launched the world's first WhatsApp and WeChat compliance capability. You may wonder why this is required, but I think this early 2021 article in Financial Futures, written by Raili Maripuu, CEO of Mobilewatch explains the need quite well Regtech: watching personal mobile devices in financial services, but why?. Great to have Adrienne back on Kiwi Turf and looking forward to what happens next for the region.
Timing being everything, it seems that taxonomy and ontology are the theme for November, not only did I catch up with Sarah Sinclair of Changegap who is undertaking a Regulatory Taxonomy and Ontology project for FINOS, but I also had a fabulous opportunity to chat with Judi Vernau Information Architect at Metataxis, about the benefits of understanding your business taxonomy and ontology. The concept is not new but coupled with increasing regulatory need to understand your data, how it's used, where it goes etc, along with the vast amount of data, documents, and forms now held online and the complexity of retrieving from this pool of information, the demand for transparency and clarity is increasing.
For number geeks, this pool of information is estimated to reflect that global data storage will exceed 200 zettabytes (200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data, by 2025...around half of it will be stored in the cloud [cloudwrads.net stats].
It is therefore crucial to understand data, but just having a common taxonomy is no longer enough, with increasing cross border interactions, a common ontology is also required, a framework to understand the business and data architecture, which enables, Machine Learning and NLP technologies to mine this data in a fraction of the time it would take an archivist to locate a record from 10 years back. If you want to know more about this read Judi’s post here,or check out her articles on her work with Archives New Zealand.
Another nice little email to drop into my box this week was from Tom Barraclough of the Brainbox Institute. Tom, Clark and Hamish continue on their path to legislation as code/ Better rules, I am excited to watch where this next initiative goes, and keen to be part of that journey. If you don’t know what legislation as code is, or even if you do, their paper on this is an interesting read Legislation as Code — Brainbox and a starter for Tom’s proposal for a Digital Lab check it out here.
Publications
When I first started this journey there was very little written about RegTech as a subject - which in some ways made my Masters more complex and frustrating to research. Then, there was just the one non-fiction book “The RegTech Book’, as I graduate this month, I will be delighted to be getting my hands on the newly published “#Regtechblackbook, the sequel, co-authored by some of the best names in the RegTech arena, perfect for some summer reading in the garden.
When I began ‘Regulatable’ the website was a pilot to help with navigating regulation and legislative requirements. The information was in the regulators' websites, but not always easy to find or understand - even when you knew what you were looking for. Over the past 2 years, some of these sites have had revamps and are getting better. Binu Paul however, has listened to the challenges and recently published a pretty comprehensive Resources page to the FinTech.Gov website that's worth bookmarking as a favourite especially for any innovators needing to navigate financial services regulations.
What's sharing on Linkedin
With the Singapore Reg Tech Festival taking place this month, Deborah Young reposted her excellent 2021 RegTech research findings highlighting,
‘... three traits that buyers overwhelmingly preferred in RegTech Vendors were organisational readiness, dedicated accounts resources, and the all important track record.”
With Buy v Build becoming a more popular option for companies solving regulatory challenges and with so many options on the market, the issue leans toward making the right choice of solution? Deborah’s report is well worth a read for some good insights, and her upcoming RegTech awards for 2021 will highlight some of the more successful players this year.
Webinars
Neil Calvert, is always a good guy for a chat, his product Linq, has in my opinion untapped benefits, the concept of using Digital Twins to virtualise your current state to future state outcome before you spend money on the “fail fast” and “test & learn” approaches, is for me a logical approach and crosses all industries, as evidenced recently when Ryan ‘the Lyon’ Ashton hosted A YARN LIVE - NZDF Digital Twins with LINQ webinar with Neil and Sally Garrett of the NZ Defense Force.
Ian Hollowbread, Director of RegTech at ING, chatted with Gordon Chapple, Specialist Lead at FMA as part of the RegTech NZ webinar series, “raising awareness of RegTech options and collaboration to solve local challenges”. Ian and Gordon recounted their experiences working together in a cross functional collaboration to solve regulatory challenge. My 3 takeaways from this very engaging session were:-
Regulatory challenge needs to be solved through collaboration,
You need the right people in the room with the mindset and authority to collaborate,
Regulators verbalising where they see technology being applied, will encourage more adoption and awareness
I am keen to see whether the ING Hub approach can be progressed locally, if it is of interest to you to get involved in a collaboration of this sort, message me directly else reach out to the RegTech NZ team for a chat.
A nice segway, albeit a more unusual playlist for me, was my final viewing for this month. The launch of the National Parties “ Big Fixes” of which the Tech Sector is one of the key focus areas. Having seen how the Government is engaging in tech in other countries such as, Australia, Singapore, Canada and the UK, more focus on a key export and potential revenue generation area for New Zealand is a necessity, and real opportunity for anyone and everyone in New Zealand. The challenges to this identified in Nationals Tech Issue paper are not new, more investment, access to education, and more growth in tech, is a necessity if this industry is to be developed effectively and create worthwhile opportunities across all communities, not just the big Cities. Other countries have done it, Estonia, Africa, Tel Aviv, Prague, Lisbon amongst others, and so can New Zealand with the right focus and investment. You don’t have to imagine what this might look like, but if you want a prompt, ING has a video of what good might look like here, let's not get left behind.