Financial services operators have had to rapidly evolve to meet tighter regulatory and compliance standards.
The sector has been under the microscope since the Banking Royal Commission, which took place between 2017 and 2019.
The increased expectations imposed by Australia’s financial regulators have come at a cost to industry players of all sizes, which have had to bolster their compliance and risk capabilities.
This has also presented opportunities for those who can help banks and financiers meet these obligations through specialist skills and technologies.
Investors are invited to explore the topic at the first of The Market Herald (TMH) Thematica Series events, which kick off this month in Melbourne on October 11 and Sydney on October 13.
The lunchtime events will look at regulatory and compliance impacts throughout Australia and New Zealand.
There’ll be several guest speakers at the events, including:
- ASX-listed fintech Identitii (ID8) CEO and MD John Rayment and Chairman Tim Phillips;
- Liam Griffith, who most recently served as Asia-Pacific Digital Transformation Lead at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mr Griffith spent more than a decade with HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank; and,
- Tim Dickinson, who was CEO of Assembly Payments, which merged with Currency Fair to become global payments business Zai.
John Rayment said the challenges for the industry created wide opportunity.
“Inside the industry, people are very, very familiar with the rapid change and what it means to meet increasingly difficult compliance and regulation standards,” Mr Rayment said.
“I think the challenge for us is trying to educate those who don’t work inside the finance industry and therefore are less close to it, so it (the TMH Investor Series) is a great opportunity to help people outside the industry come up the curve.
“The financial services industry all around the world is having to invest significant amounts of capital in compliance and risk programs.
“One statistic that we’ve read recently says that the industry will be spending 200 per cent more on companies like Identitii in the reg-tech industry — something like $205 billion — on solving these kinds of problems by the year 2026. So it’s a significant additional outlay on an emerging industry segment.
“There are opportunities for reg-tech players like Identitii and the thousands of other companies that are operating in the broader regulatory technology space, and there are also opportunities for financial services businesses to differentiate themselves in an increasingly complex landscape.”
To attend The Market Herald Investor Series event, please register your interest here, or send an email to madeline.howson@advisir.com.au for more details.