TechSprint: Consultation on the Potential for New Technologies to Address Challenges in Regulatory Compliance and Supervision (RegTech/SupTech)

The Saudi G20 Presidency, in collaboration with the Singapore Centre of the BIS Innovation Hub (BISIH Singapore Centre) and with the support of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, is launching the TechSprint Initiative. The purpose of TechSprint is to highlight the important work that private firms and national authorities are doing to deploy new technologies to resolve operational problems in the areas of regulatory compliance (RegTech) and supervision (SupTech).

In TechSprint, the BIS Innovation Hub will publish selected operational problems in regulatory compliance and supervision (“problem statements”), and will invite private firms to develop technological solutions to these problems. A selected group of these solutions will be discussed in a closed-door TechSprint Touchpoint workshop for national authorities and private firms that will be hosted by the BISIH Singapore Centre in June. Subsequently, the Saudi G20 Presidency will convene an independent international expert panel to choose the most promising solutions, which will then be showcased at the MENA FinTech Festival in Riyadh in September 2020, and the Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2020.

In this connection, the Saudi G20 Presidency and the BIS Innovation Hub are inviting FSB member jurisdictions to identify what they believe to be the three greatest problems in the fields of regulatory compliance and supervision that could be addressed through the application of new technologies. FSB member jurisdictions are asked to submit their “problem statements” to the FSB Secretariat (attention: Patrick Armstrong, Member of Secretariat, patrick.armstrong@fsb.org) no later than the close of business CET on 2 March 2020. Institutions from the same jurisdiction are encouraged to complete individual responses rather than a single combined response. On the basis of these submissions, the BISIH Singapore Centre will curate and publish the most compelling problem statements, inviting private firms to develop solutions. The submissions of individual FSB members will be held in confidence and will not be made public when the problem statements are posted. Beyond TechSprint itself, interested FSB members are encouraged to work in their own sand-box environments with suitable private firms in order to test the feasibility of potential solutions.

Example problem statements:

• Data Management: How can data validation tools improve quality control in checks for completeness, correctness and consistency in accordance with reporting rules?
• Regulatory Reporting: How can machine-readable regulation serve to reduce error prone template reporting while improving compliance in a more cost-efficient manner?
• Misconduct analysis and market surveillance: How can text-mining tools more efficiently audit promotional materials, prospectuses and/or financial statements that financial institutions produce?

Questions respecting the TechSprint initiative may be directed towards Abdulaziz Almuaythir, Policy Advisor, Saudi G20 Policy Team, abdulaziz.almuaythir@g20finance.gov.sa,  and  Ross Leckow, Senior Adviser Fintech – Strategy and Legal, BIS Innovation Hub, ross.leckow@bisih.org.