Alyned Thinking

This text was submitted as an answer to the UK Financial Conduct Authority’s Call for Input on Regtech. We’re publishing it also here on our blog to foster wider discussion. Based on our extensive experience in this field, we have been discussing several RegTech-related ideas here at Alyne (further thinking on this in our blog). In the tradition of other “-Techs” (such as “FinTech”), we understand RegTech as digitisation of regulatory compliance processes. Digitisation is of course a buzzword itself, but it helps to frame it more in the context of automation. In other industries and topic areas, it is envisioned to completely substitute manual processes at some point or at least augment human capabilities and capacity to rapidly scale and leverage the output of manual processes.

2016 has arrived and if we are to believe the talking heads on blogs, Twitter and LinkedIn, it is the year FinTech companies will continue to dismantle and replace banks and the RegTech force awakens. My prediction is that RegTech developments will certainly be closely watched by like-minded entrepreneurs, B2B focussed investors and regulated companies. The open question remains, who will actually emerge as relevant in the RegTech space in 2016 and why. I believe there are five promises a relevant RegTech company will have to keep in order to justify the current attention in this area.

There is a new buzzword rocking the financial services industry: RegTech. According to the easy algorithm of combining a short form of an industry to be disrupted with the suffix “-Tech”, RegTech stands for “Regulation Technology”. To explain it, we have to make a little excursion to last week’s hot topic in the form of FinTech (Financial Technology).

Some FinTechs have become so successful over the recent months that they are challenging some of the world’s oldest major banks and insurances in revenue and market cap. Where no FinTech can compete, however, is on a track record of trust that dates back centuries, as in the case of some banks. When your entire business model is dealing with intangible assets, the trust of your customers and counterparties remains the only true currency you have. Today’s cyber security capability is yesterday’s bank vault. Unfortunately, there are more than enough recent examples of digital companies, including prominent FinTechs such as Kreditech, being brought down by cyber security events, hacks or compliance failures. In light of seemingly overpowering, anonymous and omnipresent cyber criminals, a young FinTech organisation might despair. At second glance however, the majority of cyber attacks have not been complex. In most cases, the attacks were either through social engineering or exploiting very basic weaknesses or a combination of both.

Every growing organisation will reach a certain point in time where someone in a leadership position wants to set a certain behaviour for the organisation and gathering everyone around the water cooler to tell them becomes impractical, too non-committal or plain illegal. In nearly every organisation I have encountered, the approach has been to open up a word processor, draft a policy, get sign-off and publish it somewhere as a PDF. I have never seen this being particularly effective, and here’s why.