Secure the Fintech Future with RegTech
Financial Technology (Fintech) refers to the use of technological advancements in the financial industry. Today, Fintech has entered into the phase of rapid development in the landscape of information technology and the financial market. This revolution is changing the ways how people use, transfer, save and manage their money. According to KPMG, in 2018, the global Fintech market size reached $111.8 billion. This represents a 120% increase as compared to 2017 ($50 billion). This increase shows how much industries are influenced by the services and adoption of RegTech.
This Fintech emerging era requires a parallel involvement of regulations under which certain financial services are provided. These regulatory solutions are called “RegTech”. It is essential for the financial institutions to integrate the regulatory technology into their internal system to reduce the compliance cost. Both Fintech and Regtech are playing a potential role in reconceptualizing the nature of the financial system. In the first quarter of 2017, digital transformations resulted in 34 deals totalling $238 million. This represents a 102% increase in the yearly growth rate. These digital transformations ensure the integration of Regtech associated with their system to avoid heavy risks, fines, and reputational damage.
The intersection of Fintech and RegTech
Fintech & Regtech together provide a fertile platform that replaces inefficient traditional financial systems with efficient online financial systems. This intersection is making new ways for the authorities to monitor and regulate business development. The identification and verification of identities are essential for the financial institutions and online marketplace. It ensures that the activities happening in the system do not involve any bad actors. Regtech plays a crucial role in introducing regulations regarding Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance. The businesses perform their activities under these regulations given by Regtech.
A PWC survey shows that 88% of traditional financial institutions are planning to collaborate with Fintech companies to transform their ways of payments, money transfers, and transactions in the next 3 to 5 years. Therefore, with the developed economies, the IT industry and financial institutions need to transform their system with a blend of Fintech and Regtech. This will help them in:
- Providing services under regulatory compliances
- Understanding how the data of public is collected and processed
- Taking an even approach to fulfil the compliance requirements in multiple markets
- Developing standard auditing information reports
- Sharing the data with third-parties in a secure manner
- Ethical contracts in sharing sensitive information
- Transforming the way through which data is stored
With the passing time changings are prosed in the Regtech. These amendments in the regulatory compliances are in the response of criminal activities happening as a result of new technology. As with every passing day, where technology is getting strong, attackers are also finding new ways and technologies to exploit the loopholes in the system. To make Fintech safer from fraudulent behaviours, it is important to implement the Regtech proposed regulations accordingly. It is essential for the Fintech and Regtech solutions to be transparent in order to perform financial actions in a trusted environment. This compilation together gives results in a hard time for bad actors.
Importance of KYC & AML Compliance
It is important for financial institutions and the online marketplace to implement KYC and AML checks in their system. The transactions and money flow in the system need to be monitored continuously. This will reduce the risks of online payment scams and malicious activities from happening in the system. Each participant of the onboarding system needs to be identified and verified under the regulation of KYC. Along with this, the transparency of data flow needs to be taken into consideration. For any financial institution, it is necessary to adopt the technological ways that help them achieve the goal of transparency.
The Fintech industry facilitates the financial institutions and customers by sharing the data among third parties. A centralized database keeps a record of fraudsters that help the financial industry to verify the identity. In case any malicious personality is spotted, the transaction is reported immediately to prevent heavy risks. A standard way is defined by Regtech for storing and using the data. This makes it easy to monitor cross-border transactions and mitigating the gap between multiple monitoring ways used by different institutions. Also, the clarity in data flow and maintenance by multiple institutions help in easy monitoring and management.
Adoption of Regtech
Regulators are harnessing technology incredibly from the past 10 years. The digitization in the industries has influenced the regulators which shows a considerable demand for technological advancements in multiple industries. Innovations are based on machine learning, artificial intelligence and many such algorithms that come up with their own pros and cons towards the industrial and community level.
Streamline identity verification is the goal of online financial institutions in the onboarding process. Also, this is the demand of Regtech to ensure KYC and AML compliances in the system. Where on one side, the Fintech industry is introducing new technologies in the financial market, on the other side it is compulsory for the regulators to adopt significant regulations.
Influence of Fintech and Regtech
Regtech facilitates both the regulators and industries. Industries can mitigate the risks of online identity fraud and other fraudulent activities effectively. Not only this, the empowerment of regulatory capital and advisory firms is fulfilled. Regtech provides new opportunities and facilities for the Fintech startups that are contributing to the betterment of industries. The compliance risks are expected to be $120 billion in the next 5 years. To mitigate these risks, Fintech should ensure the deployment of secure systems.
Regulators are facilitating themselves with the adoption of Regtech by using new monitoring ways that need less human power and consumes less time. The investigation is done by the automated system based on advanced technologies to mitigate the online risks of breaches. Companies like Apple, Google, etc. are gathering a large amount of data which results in more revenue generation. These companies operate on loyalty schemes instead of traditional financial institutions and provide new forms of financial services. These evolutionary services require further Regtech evolutions.
Conclusion
With the advancements in technologies, Regtech is updated accordingly. The industries that lie under the hood of the Fintech innovations need to comply with the Regtech to ensure a reliable and secure system. Fintech is revolutionizing speedily and so regulations. The success is only possible when in the system, these both work side by side.
