RegTech Round-up

The financial industry has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, with the accelerated shift to digitized services having a profound impact on the banking landscape. Not only has it changed the way financial institutions operate, but it has also affected anti-money laundering risks and financial crime prevention measures across the enterprise.

As a result, there has been a marked shift in focus from traditional risk management practices to enhanced business resilience. This new approach emphasizes the importance of preparing for and quickly adapting to potential disruptions to critical financial infrastructure and services. Early adopters of this approach are expected to gain a competitive advantage as they streamline critical services and help to strengthen the wider financial market infrastructure.

Regulators in the European Union have expanded the scope of the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) to include obligations designed to ensure that financial institutions' business lines remain operationally resilient against various categories of risk. Similarly, in Canada, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) has issued updated Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) guidance and plans to hold a public information session on operational risk and resilience in the first quarter of 2023, with a view to publishing draft revised guidance for consultation in Spring 2023.

In this episode Charlene Sebastian, Head of Client Success at MinervaAI talks with Denis Nwanshi, Founder of NetraScale, and the future of secure digital banking research initiative, NetraBank, to explore the intersection between operational resilience and financial crime prevention, with a particular emphasis on the role of next-generation technologies. These technologies can help protect critical financial infrastructure and services while enhancing capabilities for financial crime detection. The use of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain can aid in detecting fraudulent activities and mitigating risks. Additionally, the integration of these technologies can help to enhance financial institutions' compliance with regulatory requirements and safeguard against potential threats to their reputation.

Denis is an accomplished executive specializing in delivering mission-critical digital platforms, data-driven products and automated infrastructure for highly regulated institutions. He founded NetraScale in 2014, providing high-impact cloud-native architectures and enterprise integration services to clients in the banking, insurance,  retail/commerce and public sectors. With practical knowledge of fintech, regtech, payments modernization, cyber security, operational resilience, and a wide range of next-generation technologies and data management strategies, he has expanded his business to build AI-enabled niche platforms centered on innovation, security and sustainable business value. Denis is a strong advocate for mentoring, design thinking, and agile-lean principles. In his spare time, he enjoys organizing interactive tech talks, panel discussions and hackathons.

In this episode of RegTech Round-up, Charlene Sebastian, Head of Client Success at

Money laundering and terrorism financing laws apply to millions of businesses, across 30+ industry sectors, and in over 200 Financial Action Task Force (FATF) member countries. And yet, there is no industry standard on how businesses should apply the risk-based approach (RBA) when developing Enterprise-wide money laundering and terrorism financing risk assessments.

In this episode of RegTech Round-up, Charlene Sebastian, Head of Client Success at MinervaAI and strategic advisor to the Canadian RegTech Association (CRTA), talks with Anthony Quinn, Founder and CEO of Arctic Intelligence, a multi-award-winning RegTech firm specializing in software for enterprise-wide audit, compliance, and risk management related to financial crime, about how firms can dramatically simplify the EWRA by maximising their data and using technology to automate the process; to reduce residual risk exposure and be more strategic in the application of enterprise risk controls to improve operational processes, remove bias and drive revenue. Anthony also highlights key findings from the Arctic Intelligence 2022 AML Industry Benchmarking report.

Many organisations struggle to identify and assess their risks and vulnerabilities to financial crime and as a result may not design, implement and maintain controls that are appropriate and proportionate to these risks.  More often than not enterprise-wide risk assessments (EWRAs) are conducted manually on spreadsheets, which are often not fit for purpose and take too long to complete, resulting in risks being presented to Boards that are more likely than not, out of date.

March is Fraud Prevention month!

Digital Identification Verification (IDV) technologies play a critical role in preventing and detecting identity fraud. Through document verification and liveness checks, IDV solutions can be used to address a number of regulatory identification and know your customer requirements. 

While embraced by many digital banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, as part of a frictionless customer on-boarding experience and to automate key anti-money laundering (AML) requirements; traditional banking, wealth management services and credit unions have been slower to implement IDV solutions, citing cost, accuracy and complexity challenges.

In this episode of RegTech Round-up, Charlene Sebastian, strategic advisor with the Canadian RegTech Association (CRTA) Head of Client Success at MinervaAI, chats with Gene DiMira, a Canadian Anti-Money Laundering and Digital Identity pioneer, and Leigh Day, Business Development Manager for Yoti, a leading digital identity provider, about IDV: what it is (and what it’s not), and how you can seamlessly meet critical regulatory requirements. We also demystify some of the key challenges and perceived barriers to implementation and discuss how to prepare for a successful IDV launch.

This episode was sponsored by: Yoti ⁠https://www.yoti.com/

March is Fraud Prevention month!

Digital Identification Verification (IDV) technologies play a critical role in preventing and detecting identity fraud. Through document verification and liveness checks, IDV solutions can be used to address a number of regulatory identification and know your customer requirements. 

While embraced by many digital banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, as part of a frictionless customer on-boarding experience and to automate key anti-money laundering (AML) requirements; traditional banking, wealth management services and credit unions have been slower to implement IDV solutions, citing cost, accuracy and complexity challenges.

In this episode of RegTech Round-up, Charlene Sebastian, strategic advisor with the Canadian RegTech Association (CRTA)

This episode was sponsored by: Yoti https://www.yoti.com/

In this episode of ESG Insights, host Donna Bales, speaks with Johnny Mattimore, Global Head of Risk and Sustainable Finance at First Derivatives. 

We look at ESG from a risk lens - examining regulatory drivers, the maturity of capital market participants in understanding ESG exposures and how we can avoid past mistakes by using open source and proxy data and collaborative efforts for baseline data. Johnny shares First Derivatives efforts in establishing a technology cohort to work on an open source sustainable finance taxonomy - to create open source data models of regulations and have them peer reviewed reducing duplication. 

The integration of digital assets into our global financial system continues to raise many questions. Has crypto hit the mainstream? If so, what regulations should apply? Should characteristics of the underlying technology play a role in how it’s regulated? And can crypto ever be truly regulated at all?

In this episode, Charlene Sebastian Head of Client Success at MinervaAI and Strategic Advisor with the CRTA, talks with Tim Ward, Head of Product at CUBE a global regulatory insights firm based in the United Kingdom about their latest report “Cryptopia: Regulation and Crypto on a Cliff Edge” to explore the answers to these questions and more.

In this episode, host Paul McRorie speaks with Blythe Barber Head of Business Development, Americas from Droit and Loren Schwartz, Senior Director of Regulatory Technology from CIBC.  They discuss the merits of buying versus building in house and how API's have introduced opportunities to integrate but they do not come without challenges. 

In this episode our host, Matt Fowler, speaks with Michael Barton from Invest Northern Ireland and Paul Childerhose (CRTA Board Member and Membership Engagement lead) about the opportunities that exist for firms large and small to leverage the growing tech and data talent in and around Belfast. With a growing need to manage common regulatory challenges Invest Northern Ireland, and the CRTA, are able to help firms find the right services, solutions and talent. As the flow of regulation, and often innovation, moves across Europe towards North America hear how you can find the right support for your growth and success as distance and boarders create less and less friction to your success.

In this episode, host Myron Mallia-Dare speaks with Abishek Gupta from Sutra Management Consulting. Sutra Management Consulting is a analytics driven advisory focusing on assisting their clients deploy analytic and AI solutions.  In this inspiring episode Abishek explains how they recognized the gap of knowledge at the operational level at organizations trying to deploy AI and how they seized this opportunity early in Asia.  Now expanding into North America, Abishek shares their company journey and some of the key differences of working in Asia versus North America.