Fintech needs Regtech: To reduce costs and drive innovation, financial institutions need to break down value chain

In today’s complex and rapidly evolving landscape, financial service providers face more compliance burdens than ever before. The rising costs and complexity of building and maintaining market-specific regulatory processes are a significant challenge for Swiss banks and asset managers – next to the cost and innovation challenges they are already facing. Working closely with established partners, Deloitte has launched a new platform to automate and outsource regulatory processes: Deloitte Managed Services.

Today's unprecedented economic challenges are forcing financial institutions to rethink the way they do business. Swiss banks and asset managers face decreasing margins and a challenging economic environment, as well as changing client needs and a pressure to innovate. On top of that, the level and complexity of regulation in the financial market is constantly increasing.

Regulatory compliance is mandatory for financial service providers – but it is also non-differentiating and increasingly costly. There are often differences between country-specific regulations, which makes the implementation even more complex. This is one driver behind the trend of financial institutions reducing their international footprint, not just in terms of countries covered but also the markets they serve and the products and services they deliver. At the same time, the technological evolution is enabling banks to create new digital channels and opportunities to expand their international reach and client base. The full potential of new technologies (fintech) can only be realized if the relevant regulations are duly adhered to.

Deloitte Managed Services

Deloitte has launched its Managed Services platform as a solution to this conundrum, working closely with integrated cloud applications and platform services provider Oracle, know-your-client specialist smartKYC and business intelligence expert Bureau van Dijk. Deloitte Managed Services uses a framework that allows organisations to identify all relevant regulatory impacts as well as leverage solutions between regulations and across industry players.

Micha Bitterli, Partner and Head of Managed Services at Deloitte in Switzerland said, “We are convinced that this answer to the dual challenge of increasing regulation and an economically challenging environment for banks does not mainly lie in cost and footprint reduction, but rather in smart solutions mutualising the costs of regulatory compliance across industry players.”

He adds: “Everyone in the Swiss financial community is currently talking about how to further reduce costs and drive innovation at the same time. We see various banks considering – and some banks already implementing – how to automate business processes. Whilst the talk of the town is fintech, we think that the automation of regulatory processes, regtech, is at least as crucial for the future success of financial organisations. Deloitte has built a platform to do exactly that: enable banks to leverage core compliance processes across regulations and across industry players.”

Breaking down the value chain

Sven Probst, Lead Partner Financial Services at Deloitte in Switzerland, said, “To face the current cost and innovation pressures, banks need to break down their value chain – and they need to do it now. The best way to do so is to automate and outsource certain processes. For example by transforming and increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of their compliance and tax functions. As an independent third party provider and working with best-of-breed partners along the value chain, Deloitte offer banks a cost-effective and risk-managed solution to their compliance challenges.”

Deloitte’s Managed Services platform consists of two key modules:

1. Compliance as a Service: Allows financial service providers to partially or wholly outsource their compliance activities to Deloitte Managed Services, thus transferring compliance activities to specialized experts and ensuring that the workflows are executed efficiently and according to latest standards. This includes the Managed Client Onboarding & Monitoring service, which supports the banks’ relationship managers and compliance officers in the collection and active management of KYC-related information during the entire lifecycle of a client relationship.
2. Tax as a Service: Enables financial service providers to outsource a part of or all recurring tax-driven activities to Deloitte Managed Services, thus ensuring that the workflows are executed in an efficient way and are up to the latest standards, while getting access to local tax experts for specific issues.

For more information on Deloitte Managed Services platform and our financial services practice, please visit our website.

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