Understanding Regtech For Digital Regulatory Compliance

This chapter explores the promise and potential of Regulatory Technologies (RegTech), a new and vital dimension to FinTech. It draws on the findings and outcomes of a five-year research programme to highlight the role that RegTech can play in making regulatory compliance more efficient and effective. The chapter presents research on the Bank of England/Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) RegTech Sprint initiative, whose objective was to demonstrate how straight-through processing of regulations and regulatory compliance reporting using semantically enabled applications can be made possible by RegTech. The chapter notes that the full benefits of RegTech will only materialise if the pitfalls of a fragmented Tower of Babel approach are avoided. Semantic standards, we argue, are the key to all this.