The Saudi G20 Presidency and the BIS Innovation Hub in Singapore launched the G20 TechSprint earlier in April 2020, inviting private firms to come up with innovative technological solutions to existing problems in the areas of RegTech and SupTech. The competition designed in the style of a hackathon is supported by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the Financial Stability Board (FSB), API Exchange (APIX) and the RegTech for Regulators Accelerator (R2A).
The organisers polled members of the Financial Stability Board essentially comprising of global regulators and supervisors, to identify the most compelling problems that need addressing in the areas of RegTech and SupTech. They identified the following three high priority areas and presented the problem statement along with the desired solution.
They are:
Dynamic Information sharing for Supervisors and Regulators in Response to Crises
Since the onset of the Covid-19 global pandemic, supervisors and regulators have been coordinating on a frequent basis with the aim of supporting the global economy by ensuring the continued functioning of our global financial system. The pandemic has called for a dynamic response, where regulatory and supervisory measures are implemented on an almost daily basis.
Can a technological solution be developed to facilitate the sharing of critical information among regulators and supervisors? Through the use of an application that sources both structured data (e.g. financial regulatory reports) and publicly available information that may be unstructured (e.g. releases on national authorities’ websites on regulatory and supervisory measures in response to the crisis, market feeds on developing events and social media sources, etc) on a near real-time basis. The solution should offer a comprehensive overview of the measures undertaken within and across jurisdictions in terms of the regulatory and supervisory responses, categorized across the different components of the financial system.
This solution should be applicable and deployable in response to a crisis that could have an impact on global financial stability. An ideal solution would incorporate user-friendly interface, with a searchable database on supervisory and regulatory measures currently in place, and dashboarding tools that would allow for context and customisations based on differing user requirements (e.g. focus by regions and/or on different focal parameters such as capital and liquidity risk). Solutions that take advantage of machine learning to increase the speed of accurately filtering between noise and signals would aid effective monitoring of market developments, especially in these critical moments.
A bonus outcome of the solution is if it could also be easily deployed for regulatory oversight at the level of individual firms, such as in aiding supervisors to quickly assess and diagnose the level of risk to specific financial institutions.
Credit : https://www.bis.org/hub/g20_techsprint.htm
AML Monitoring and Surveillance (including a focus on crypto issues)
Monitoring AML/CFT Risks: Crypto assets have garnered significant interest from the financial industry. However, AML/CFT risk in the crypto asset space has been a constant concern for regulators.
How can AI (artificial intelligence), ML (machine-learning), data visualisation tools and other technologies help financial institutions conduct better monitoring and report suspicious activities in more timely and accurate manner for AML/CFT purposes, as well as help crypto assets service providers comply with AML/CFT regulations? A particular area of interest would be tools to monitor against AML/CFT risks at the main fiat-to-crypto conversion gateways (i.e. help gatekeepers identify suspicious users/transactions in a timely and accurate manner).
Credit : https://www.bis.org/hub/g20_techsprint.htm
Regulatory Reporting and Ensuring Compliance
Regulatory reporting and ensuring compliance: With increasing digitalisation, are there upstream solutions and tools that would enable regulators to easily prepare and transmit machine-readable and machine-executable regulations to their regulated entities (i.e. codified regulations that are sent to regulated entities that would allow for regulatory data to be easily and autonomously mined and reported). This should result in greater regulatory compliance, lower regulatory burden and cost, improve data quality and consistency in regulatory reporting, as well as engender more timely surveillance by the regulatory authorities.
Solutions should be deployable at least within a jurisdiction (with teams responsible for demonstrating this ability), and configurable for deployment across multiple jurisdictions, especially in areas of regulation where there are internationally accepted and harmonised data requirements (e.g. established data identifiers such as the Legal Entity Identifier Regulatory Oversight Committee (LEI ROC), the Unique Transaction (UTI) and the Unique Product Identifier (UPI)). Solutions could also include the development of a common code repository shared between the regulators and regulated entities to push and pull required regulatory reports/data via authorised APIs.
Credit : https://www.bis.org/hub/g20_techsprint.htm
A panel of judges comprising of industry experts, academics and regulatory policy experts are involved in shortlisting and selecting the winning team.
The TechSprint attracted 128 proposals from companies across 35 countries. A midpoint review happened in August, and the judges shortlisted 20 teams. The final review is scheduled for October 2020 when the winners will be announced. The winning teams will have an opportunity to present a demo of their solution at the Singapore Fintech festival scheduled to happen in Singapore in November 2020.
List of selected participants:
- Apiax AG
- BearingPoint Software Solutions
- BlockFundChain
- Business Reporting – Advisory Group
- Brag
- Coinfirm Ltd
- Cylynx
- Eightwire
- Expleo Solution Limited
- Financial Network Analytics (two teams)
- GeoGuard
- Gestell
- ITC Forward Innovation
- Radicali Pte Ltd
- RegCentric
- REGnosys
- Suade Labs
- Tookitaki
- UnBlock Analysis
- Wolters Kluwer
Note: Due to the evolving Covid-19 situation, there may be changes to the G20 TechSprint schedule. Accordingly, this article will be revised, so, watch this space to stay current with the updates on G20 TechSprint!