BearingPoint RegTech Unveils ‘RegTech Factory’ to Drive Down Cost of Compliance

BearingPoint RegTech, a leading international provider of innovative supervisory, regulatory and risk technology solutions (SupTech, RegTech and RiskTech), has launched an outsourcing solution for regulatory reporting that will diminish the cost of compliance for institutions.

The UK banking industry is very complex and diverse, with 58,000 firms impacted by financial regulations, including banks, building societies, lenders, challenger banks and other financial institutions. Aside from the challenger banks (that had no legacy software systems and are therefore inherently ‘digital native’), there is still a heavy reliance on costly, manual processing.

As such, regulatory reporting has become an increasingly complex and consequently expensive part of a UK financial services firm’s operations. For example, the cost of regulatory reporting in the mortgage domain for a large regulated firm was estimated by the FCA at an annual average of £450,000 for ongoing and a further £700,000 on change related costs (in addition to technology costs, which were excluded).

In response, BearingPoint’s ‘RegTech Factory’ utilizes a common platform and provides firms with a standardized granular data model to interface with, something the industry now recognises as being key to driving down costs. The advantage of this approach is not only a shared common infrastructure for market participants, but by moving to a more granular data model, there is a level of shielding from regulatory change and the much sought after data lineage from report to system. By sharing infrastructure services, embracing standardization, and adopting regulatory Reporting-as-a-Service, institutions have the opportunity to reduce the costs and resources associated with the operation of their own reporting system.

“The UK banking industry is competing in processes where no revenue is being generated. We believe that this situation will change,” said Mark Shead, Head of RegTech Solutions UK at BearingPoint RegTech. “There is room for financial institutions in the UK to work together more, collaborating on the conceptualizing of reporting tools, the resultant IT build and the deployment of new reporting systems.”