The Model Office Blog

 Benchmarking professional development within the retail financial service industry means calibrating the FCA directives within Model Office’s (MOs) algorithm. In our blog FCA project Innovate, regulatory resources and RegTech development we detailed some of the FCA papers that MO’s algorithm assesses and incorporates into the regulatory and business development benchmarking.

 

The problem with regulatory compliance and business development is it’s a bit like hurdling in the dark: you just don’t know if your strategy will protect against the constant stream of regulatory directives, compliance costs and market risks.

Launched with plenty of fanfare, the FCA’s project innovate has its Sandbox live with 24 accepted participants playing in its regulatory safe harbour and testing innovative services, products and business models in a live environment. The FCA TechSprint initiative is also live where app developers meet and are challenged over two days to create a prototype technology for streamlining business operations and regulatory reporting.

With all this creativity in play, when we were asked into the FCA to ‘kick the tires’ around the sandbox, we thought that the regulator should walk its talk and create a digital diagnostic platform that allows firms to see if they are hitting the regulatory bases and also assess how they are competing in a highly competitive market. ‘Good idea’ said the FCA, ‘But’ (there’s always a but) ‘we can’t be seen to be prescriptive’.

http://www.model-office.co.uk

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With the rise of financial digital services the challenge for financial institutions is to meet all regulatory directives around Treating Customer’s Fairly (TCF) Know Your Customer (KYC) and the ‘double lock’ advice suitability (RDR) with appropriate products (MiFID II).