The Importance of Peer-to-Peer Communities in Regulatory Compliance

As we’ve seen in the news in recent weeks, regulatory fines for non-compliance continue to be imposed in eyebrow-raising monetary amounts, significantly impacting share price and banks’ reputations However, we’re now seeing a trend of financial institutions refocusing on competitive advantage in an attempt to claim market share from rivals.

As we know, the area of regulatory compliance is not a differentiator for financial institutions i.e. financial institutions do not compete head-to-head with this function. This is significant as it paves the way for greater bank-to-bank and peer-to-peer collaboration to take place. It is this very fact that has helped Fenergo build our Regulatory Forums, a global peer-to-peer client community of compliance, legal and regulatory change professionals.

Compliance by Design

The Fenergo Regulatory Forum is a community-based forum that meets regularly to discuss and debate current issues across topics including  OTC reform, tax, AML/KYC, global investor protection and data privacy. With a Regulatory Forum representing each sub-vertical in financial services (capital markets (including corporate, investment and institutional banking); commercial, business and retail banking, private banking and wealth managers; and asset managers), these forums consist of a steering group supported by sub-advisory working groups. Members of the steering group are typically compliance and legal professionals, together with onboarding and data management colleagues; they’re the people with their fingers on the pulse of the latest regulatory developments and have a deep appreciation of what these changes may mean for the financial services industry.

The Forums aim to deliver a Compliance by Design process to banks and other financial institutions. They operate a series of Working Groups (WG) aligned to a particular regulation or regulatory specialism. Each member organization nominates the relevant r specialists on their team to participate in the WG.

The aim of this process is to identify and assess regulatory requirements for upcoming regulations and analyze how to apply these rules to processes, policies and procedures, and quite simply to answer the question: what is required to support and comply with this regulation? From this, a roadmap is developed and the rules are interpreted and transposed into Fenergo’s Compliance Modules.

In an environment surrounded by peers from various banks and financial institutions, the members of Fenergo’s Regulatory Forum work collaboratively to pave the way through the mires, complexities and challenges that global regulatory compliance heaps on financial institutions the world over.

But for what return?

With Fenergo’s Regulatory Forum, members collaborate locally and globally to identify and determine the regulatory compliance requirements coming down the tracks for them. By tapping into a global community of 20,000+ people across 60+ financial institutions in the world, these members can operate in a safety in numbers approach for regulatory scrutiny.

Operating under Chatham House Rules, there’s an impressive level of collaboration during the monthly Regulatory Forums. Thanks to the non-competitive nature of compliance, attendees are open about the impact of the challenges they’re facing. Similar deadlines, timelines, regulatory expectations and inspections galvanize the Working Groups to collaborate to solve the challenges they face as a group. As well as an opportunity to agree approaches to the compliance issues faced by the industry, the output from the discussions and associated working groups is fed into the Fenergo Regulatory Roadmap and, ultimately, into the Fenergo Regulatory Rules Engine.

Together, these client organizations collaborate to solve complex regulatory challenges with global solutions that aspire to comply with regulators’ expectations and demands.

Regulatory Roadmap

Having a direct input into the Fenergo Regulatory Roadmap is a critical component of the Fenergo Client Engagement model. This means that clients are empowered to address their regulatory concerns and to tap into the deep wellspring of knowledge, expertise and advice that the global Forum delivers (both in terms of Fenergo and client organizations’ subject matter experts). Once a regulation is discussed, debated, vetted and passed, it enters the Regulatory Roadmap for inclusion into the core product offering.

The Regulatory Rules Engine

The Fenergo Regulatory Rules Engine is a single repository source for all the content, intelligence and rules required to support best practice compliance with global AML/KYC, investor protection, Tax and OTC derivatives-based regulations. Easily configured to suit different set-ups, the Regulatory Rules Engine helps financial institutions comply with immediate regulatory obligations and future-proof themselves against evolving regulatory and operational requirements. Incorporating the rules framework for 70+ jurisdictions, the Rules Engine also ensures compliance with country-specific data residency and data privacy rules, making it a complete solution for organizations looking for a single-source approach to compliance.

A Powerful Approach to Future-Proofing Compliance Requirements

The outputs from the Regulatory Forum are used to keep the Rules Engine content fresh and relevant. Influencing changes to the Rules Engine, either as new rules for newly elected regulations or required amendments, the changes are packaged and released as part of the Fenergo Rules Engine upgrades. These regular enhancements and the commitment to ongoing maintenance means clients can achieve compliance well in advance of regulatory deadlines.

Towards a Single Global KYC Policy

As an automated solution, Fenergo provides financial service organizations with a more harmonized and holistic approach to regulatory compliance. Although in-country data privacy or KYC constraints mean adopting a global approach to policy and rules isn’t always possible, working with a global baseline and applying a jurisdictional uplift where necessary is becoming increasingly common. Add to this the regulatory assurance of knowing compliance has been achieved in advance of the deadline, and it’s easy to see why Fenergo’s Rules Engine and Regulatory Forums are an asset to any financial institution that’s serious about making compliance easier to manage.