How Regulatory Intelligence can help your firm be compliant

Regulatory intelligence refers to the continuous monitoring of regulatory updates and announcements, and the strategic response from a regulated entity. Automated Regulatory Intelligence (ARI) is the process of automating the regulatory change management process. 

When executed effectively, regulatory intelligence can mean much more than simply just following the rules. Financial institutions can use regulatory intelligence to access every single regulation that matters to your firm and close compliance gaps.

What are the steps to regulatory intelligence?

Regulatory intelligence from a financial institution perspective generally focuses on four main phases of work: 

1. Data analysis 
2. Strategic response planning for compliance
3. Roll out of new company protocols and procedures
4. Monitoring for continued compliance

Data analysis

Businesses can access new regulations by accessing regulatory body websites to view announcements. These regulatory bodies don’t necessarily notify the right parties directly; instead, they publish general guidelines and information which firms can manually explore.

However, this can be incredibly hard to keep up with, especially as the volume and velocity of regulatory change are neverending and relying on the manual efforts of your compliance team to seek out announcements is inefficient.

The whole world of regulatory change is expansive, from anti-money laundering to data protection and sustainability regulatory reporting. For a Compliance Officer, it can feel like you are looking at tens to hundreds of sites at once. 

Fortunately, there are regulatory intelligence software programs such as CUBE’s RegAssure available to help your organisation thrive in compliance. CUBE’s AI and machine learning capabilities can benefit your company hugely by solving compliance challenges using Natural Language Processing (NPL) to scour all relevant regulatory body websites to provide you with a complete compliance inventory. Then, everything is compiled into one simple location – your very own dashboard. 

Strategic response planning for compliance

It’s not good enough to just have the relevant regulatory content. Effective regulatory intelligence also requires organisations to create a compliance response plan including strategy. 

Occasionally, firms may rely on third parties or internal experts to implement the correct regulatory requirements into their planning. In some cases, this refers to the publication of documents. For others, a new technology system and processing protocol may be required. There is usually no single way to comply with regulatory requirements. 

Adaptability and speed in financial services firms are key in providing an advantage against competitors. Being fully compliant can give your firm the edge over others and generate more opportunities for growth.  

Compliance protocols and procedures

In a general setting, most ways of working in financial institutions now follow a prudential regime, which means showing care and forethought in business. However, more specific responses are also required to some regulations.  

Let’s use the Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) regulation as an example. It required financial services companies to have one of each metric in order to prove the identity of their customer: 

1. Knowledge (what is the name of your first school?)
2. Possession (a pin code sent to their mobile number, for example)
3. Inherence (fingerprint or facial recognition)

Many businesses would not already have the technology to collect this data or implement it in their online login systems. So, after the release of this regulation in 2015, the race was on for banks and credit institutions to implement the technology for SCA.  

As part of a wider PSD2 regulation, many institutions went straight to the mobile app space. They built banking apps which required two of the three components at each login opportunity. 

Monitoring for continued regulatory compliance

It’s important to note that regulatory intelligence is not the same in every industry. In particular, financial services is renowned for having an ever-changing regulatory landscape. This makes compliance a bit trickier and much more involved for the likes of financial institutions compared to those in other industries where regulations where there are less frequent changes. 

Therefore, continual monitoring is the only way to ensure ongoing compliance, even when regulations are updated. Unfortunately, this is just as difficult to carry out as the original research and data analysis step, if you don’t know where to look.  

CUBE’s Automated Regulatory Intelligence uses horizon scanning technology to anticipate future changes in the regulatory landscape, alerting you of any new or amended regulations. By using CUBE’s regulatory intelligence, your firm can get ahead of the race and be ready to implement changes from the first day a new regulation comes into force.  

Who is responsible for financial regulatory compliance?

Most financial institutions have their own regulatory teams or, at the very least, an individual compliance officer. These are the individuals responsible for identifying, implementing and strategising for regulatory compliance, including reacting to new announcements and implementing the right procedures at the firm.

Regulatory intelligence puts your mind at ease

At CUBE, we specialise in making sense of your regulatory world. Our regulatory intelligence solutions capture, translate and transform from thousands of regulatory sources in near real-time, replicating your organisation’s regulatory footprint. 

Your specific regulatory profile allows you to define the concepts and jurisdictions that are relevant to your firm so that CUBE can automatically monitor regulatory change as needed. Access CUBE’s golden source of regulation today by contacting us below.

Keep ahead of emerging regulations and guidance by speaking to CUBE.