RegTech is defined by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority as the application of new technologies to facilitate the delivery of regulatory requirements. Here are a few recent developments.

The head of RegTech at the Financial Conduct Authority, the world's prime promoter of RegTech in the compliance community, has weighed in on the side of gender pay equality. Francesca Hopwood Road seized on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2020 to say: “When I joined the team, I was the only woman in a ten-strong management team. Our data scientist population was largely male, and women were in more junior roles. This was true across our regtech and data science teams.”

She then promoted the interest of women in RegTech, arguing that the regulator had to set an example or nobody else would.

The Indian Government is reportedly taking RegTech seriously, with the Reserve Bank of India about to set up separate FinTech, RegTech and SupTech (supervisory technology) departments. Shri Shaktikanta Das, the bank's governor, said last year: "Regulators and supervisors have to undertake accelerated off-site surveillance. This also brings in the need for a transparent, technology and data-driven approach. To serve this need, new fields called RegTech and SupTech are coming up.

"Both the technologies aim at improving efficiency through the use of automation, introducing new capabilities and streamlining workflows. In the Reserve Bank, we have been using SupTech for data collection and analysis. The examples are Import Data Processing and Monitoring System (IDPMS), Export Data Processing and Monitoring System (EDPMS) and Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC), to name a few. Also, the risk-based supervision of banks is extensively data-driven and is an example of SupTech. The future of RegTech and SupTech technologies, however, lie in big data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, geographic information system (GIS) mapping, data transfer protocols, biometrics, etc."

RegTech, according to the Reserve Bank, is an application or platform which makes regulatory compliance more efficient through automated processes and lowers the costs of compliance. The regulator goes on to say that RegTech focuses on technologies that facilitate the delivery of regulatory requirements more efficiently and effectively.

Workiva, which operates a reporting and compliance platform, has won the Best RegTech Solution Award from FinTech Breakthrough, an organisation that recognises companies and products in the global FinTech market. The FinTech Breakthrough Awards consider nominations from 3,750 companies around the world in a range of categories, including Banking, Personal Finance, Lending, Payments, Investments, RegTech and InsurTech. Workiva has the impressive distinction of being used by three-quarters of the Fortune 500 companies.

Julie Iskow, Workiva's chief operating officer, was glad that her firm had won the award yet again. She added: “With our end-to-end platform, our customers connect and manage all of their data – from initial systems of record to final reports – with transparency and accountability.”

James Johnson of FinTech Breakthrough observed that companies spend millions of dollars on advanced ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems but still rely heavily on manual processes to analyse and report performance data.

FinTech Breakthrough has awarded Moody’s Analytics the RegTech Innovation Award for its software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. Last year Moody’s Analytics won the award for best wealth management product.

Meanwhile, Mikkel Mördrup of Compliance Solutions Strategies is arguing that the Coronavirus pandemic is going to be good for RegTech. He looked forward to a surge in RegTech investment because financial firms were going to be trying to depend less on "full time equivalents."

The European Securities and Markets Authority is going to delay phase one of the European Union's Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) until July. The British Financial Conduct Authority has, in response to this, deferred 'phase one' from April 13 to July 13, effectively combining the two phases. Mördrup, however, is arguing that the SFTR delay is 'soft.'