The use of technology to streamline regulatory processes continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace not only in the Financial Services sector but in other sectors as well. This report states the various benefits that Regulatory Technologies (RegTech) offer and how these are proven by their rapid growth and asks the question of how the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia can galvanize RegTech growth in an effective, change-provoking, and sustainable manner.

RegTech initially emerged as a solution explored by financial institutions seeking to improve their compliance practices by using emerging technology. RegTech was conceived in the Financial Services sector mostly after the 2008 global financial crisis to enable organizations to cope with the sudden onslaught of regulatory complexities and related costs. However, RegTech soon started to diversify to other sectors as it proved to improve compliance, supervisory, and regulatory capabilities.

What is RegTech?

Although a common definition of RegTech is yet to be agreed on, few common themes within the application of RegTech solution have already been identified:

• RegTech solutions can generate benefits for the ecosystem by improving monitoring and regulatory compliance- RegTech solutions historically have been closely associated with Financial Servicesand now they is starting to diversify to other sectors
• RegTech solutions address both regulators in search of supervision (SupTech) and regulated entities in search of compliance (CompTech)
• RegTech solutions aim at solving specific regulatory issues / objectives as opposed to general operational tasks