Regulation begins to bite the funds industry

Nobody likes to see an Investment Management firm take the brunt for an entire industries lack of engagement, recognition and overall lacklustre approach around a piece of regulation. However, when earlier this month it was reported that Goldman Sachs had been fined £34.3m by the FCA for its MIFID 2 breaches the industry could be felt to take a huge sigh of relief and for companies like ours a huge sense of opportunity!

Within days of the news announcement, further media reports hit the news outlets around the industries failure in other areas of MiFID II. Investment Week ran an article stating that “More than 1,000 investment firms had failed MiFID II transaction reporting requirements” and Wealth Manager was reporting that “One in four MiFID 2 firms filed ‘inaccurate’ returns in 2018”.

I have heard all the excuses from all sections of the industry over the past three years including; Brexit, lack of data, lack of IT teams, lack of budget, lack of size, to just blind ignorance. Whatever the excuses the regulators have now started taking a far more hardline approach to firms that fail to report on MiFID II.

Consequently, here lies our largest opportunity for Agility to work with the industry and help solve their regulatory data aggregation problems. Suddenly, I am having far more conversations around MiFID II and how we can help solve these issues with the use of technology.

There is nothing like the smell of fear to kick-start the legal department in fast-tracking budget spend and we are well positioned to take full advantage of this.

How Digiterre can help

Working as a technology partner for investment and financial services companies like Man Group, Digiterre assists in the design, development and implementation of financial systems to tackle the challenges and opportunities facing clients from regulatory change such as MiFID II.

Digiterre has extensive experience in highly regulated markets like investments and banking. We typically deliver technology solutions requiring business agility, adaptability, innovation and a proven track record in order to solve high risk, high profile and complex technical challenges, very well and very fast. We are passionate about exploring opportunities and solving problems that are critical to organisational competitiveness.

To learn more, contact [email protected]