Let’s talk about Open Regulation

There is an important thing happening that many may have missed imho. We talk all the time about Open Banking and how that’s developing. Why don’t we talk about Open Regulation?

Open Regulation uses APIs (Application Program Interfaces) to tap into banks systems and see if they’re doing things right or wrong. It’s a concept that isn’t new. In fact, I first talked about this idea six years ago, when I found that the Austrian regulator had built real-time connectivity between the central bank and the commercial and retail banks in the country.

Since then, the idea has developed, and you learn quickly what a simple idea this can be. You have banks that need to comply and regulators that need data to be reported to prove that the banks comply. So, why not link the regulators directly to the banks?

This is a theme being developed by my friends at Google, who are running an event next week in London. Here’s the invite:

Reserve your seat at the Reimagining Regulatory Reporting with Google Cloud event at Google’s CSG office in London on 16 June, 3:30pm (for a 4pm start). The aim is to explore the latest insights and strategies to help transform the way  business handles its regulatory reporting. Key discussions include HSBC’s regulatory reporting story with Tamsin Shaw, Global Head of Data and Cloud, Finance IT, and a live Q&A with industry experts. I’ll be moderating and attending, and would love to see you all there, as it’s an important and developing area. For example, when forecasting the future of regulatory reporting, I can see a world where every trade made on global markets is subject to regulatory algorithms; every movement of funds made by a business can be tracked and traced; every part of consumer payments is open and potentially reported.

That sounds worrying in some ways – after all, our money is one of our most secretive aspects of our lives – but what if the whole financial system was laid open to investigation and reporting? What if every trade, transaction and payment could be tracked and traced? Would this ensure insider trading, rogue traders, money launderers, terrorist financing and more would be shut down? Or would it cause a major movement away from formal systems to networked systems? After all, the libertarians say that the trust should be in the network and not in the regulator, but what if the regulator embedded their trust in the network?

These are big ticket questions that need to be debated and so the idea of reimagining regulatory reporting is a timely discussion.

I hope you can join me, Tamsin, Google and the other speakers next week. Just register here (please note, attendance is free but not guaranteed due to room size).