Highlight & stories

12 July 2020 by Richard Teng, CEO ADGM Financial Services Regulatory Authority

The financial irregularities involving Wirecard’s missing cash is unfathomable given advances in technology especially in the field of RegTech, an emerging field that promises to revolutionise compliance and mitigate risks. There should be more effective solutions to achieve the desired outcome of safe custody of monies instead of dated analogue methods of conducting bank balance verification only during audit cycles.

Similarly, most financial regulators continue to rely on routine reporting (often quarterly) by licensed firms, and annual certifications by third party auditors for validation purposes. But in cases of fraud or malfeasance, these ex-post validation methods are grossly inadequate as they do not facilitate proactive intervention.

In a digital economy, we need to harness technology to achieve better risk management and governance outcomes for consumers, investors and the marketplace. At ADGM, we have piloted a RegTech initiative leveraging APIs to monitor finances held by our licensed financial firms on a real time basis. Such RegTech solutions provide the way forward not only for the financial services sector but for all entities, especially those involving substantial public interest such as listed companies.

Learn more about ADGM FSRA's existing initiatives in RegTech.