The Financial Sector has experienced heightened scrutiny and importance has been placed on the accuracy, reliability, and promptness of data submitted for regulatory reporting. The quality of regulatory returns submitted by designated investment firms, banks, and building societies has become a key area of concern considering recent regulatory supervision and thematic findings.
Let us discuss in detail the further steps for firms to address deficiencies in their SCV regulatory reporting processes.
Challenges Faced by UK FIs in Regulatory Reporting
The following are the important challenges highlighted by PRA.
- An increased risk of material misstatements from firms that did not meet expectations, with historical lack of focus, prioritisation, and investment in this area.
- Governance and ownership issues include dispersed responsibilities, fragmented end-to-end processes, poor understanding and documentation, lack of oversight, and poor governance around key regulatory interpretations.
- Expectation for clear responsibilities, robust processes, independent testing and validation, and corrective action for key interpretations and judgments. And the use of Internal Audit where appropriate, to ensure reliability and accuracy of regulatory returns
- Identified gaps in end-to-end processes for regulatory returns, insufficient controls around models, End User Computing (EUC), lack of reconciliation checks for errors, and high degree of manual intervention.
- Disappointment in poor record-keeping of original model documentation, deficiencies in control environment around models, and inherent risks in document controls due to vulnerability to overwriting.
- Expectation for clear documentation, robust processes and controls, formal and comprehensive reconciliations, and prioritised investment in regulatory reporting in banking to reduce data errors and misstatements.
- Need for strategic investment, focus on robust sourcing of data, clear governance and sign-off for incomplete data, and simpler and more efficient infrastructure.
Overcoming Regulatory Reporting & Compliance Challenges
- Embrace Automation and Technology
- To overcome regulatory reporting issues and satisfy regulatory reporting requirements, banks must harness the power of automation and modern technology. By implementing advanced reporting systems, banks can streamline their reporting processes and ensure data accuracy. Banks can enhance operational efficiency, minimise costs, and mitigate the likelihood of errors by automating data entry, aggregation, and validation through the integration of sophisticated regulatory reporting systems and artificial intelligence technologies.
- Enhance Data Governance and Integration
- Data governance plays a vital role in generating new regulatory reporting standards. Banks need to establish robust data governance frameworks to ensure data quality, integrity, and consistency across various systems and departments. This approach facilitates effective integration of data, enabling banks to obtain a comprehensive view of their operations, enhance reporting accuracy, and minimise regulatory reporting risks.
- Emphasise Regulatory Compliance
- Banks should adopt reporting approaches that align with the regulatory frameworks such as Basel III, IFRS 9, FSCS, AEOI, and GDPR. By adhering to these standards, banks can effectively manage risks, maintain legal and ethical compliance, and reinforce trust among stakeholders.
- Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Effective reporting requires collaboration among different teams within a bank. Collaboration between finance, risk, and IT departments ensures that SCV regulatory reporting processes are aligned, data is accurate, and insights are actionable. By fostering cross-functional collaboration, banks can break down silos, optimise reporting workflows, and enhance their reporting capabilities.
- Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing
- Another effective way to overcome reporting issues is through collaboration and knowledge sharing among financial institutions. By leveraging industry networks and participating in regulatory working groups, firms can exchange best practices, discuss common challenges, and collectively find solutions. This collaborative approach promotes standardisation, consistency, and efficiency in reporting.
- Efficient Data Orchestration
- It requires data from multiple data sources to be orchestrated to prepare the regulatory reporting as per the compliance standards. Data orchestration process that helps them to achieve full compliance by leveraging existing data infrastructure, consolidating and validating data from various sources, enriching data with missing information, automating manual processes, ensuring data governance and auditability, and providing scalability and security. Such solutions streamline compliance processes, improve data accuracy and reporting quality, reduce costs and operational risks, enhance data governance and transparency, and instil greater compliance confidence.
- Continuously Monitor and Adapt
- To generate new regulatory reporting standards, banks must stay agile and adapt to changing business dynamics. It is crucial to continuously monitor and assess reporting processes, identify areas of improvement, and embrace emerging technologies and industry best practices. By staying proactive and adaptable, banks can overcome reporting challenges and drive innovation in their regulatory reporting standards.
- Reporting and Escalation
- Establish robust reporting capabilities to report on changes and issues identified during the monitoring process. Develop clear escalation pathways to an Enterprise Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) platform when issues require further risk management and oversight.
- Role of RegTech in Banks’s Regulatory Reporting
- Financial Institutions (FIs) are increasingly relying on regulatory technologies (RegTech) to streamline processes, optimise workflows, and minimise compliance risks. Financial reporting products offered by RegTech companies automate manual tasks, provide real-time compliance monitoring, streamlines the regulatory reporting obligations, and improves data quality. It also standardises and transforms data from diverse sources, ensuring accuracy and reliability. Benefits of relying on RegTech include reduced compliance costs, improved risk management, enhanced business agility, and stronger investor and regulator relationships. By embracing automation, data cleaning, and intelligent ETL capabilities, FIs can ensure efficient regulatory reporting & compliance, mitigate risks, and achieve greater operational agility in a constantly evolving regulatory landscape.
SCV Forza: A Force for Integrity in Regulatory Reporting in Banking & FIs
Ensuring accurate, reliable regulatory reporting is the cornerstone of a healthy financial sector. Yet, fragmented data, manual processes, and legacy systems often lead to errors, inconsistencies, and compliance failures.
Nevertheless, financial institutions can achieve enhanced efficiency, transparency, and risk management while simultaneously guaranteeing compliance by adopting the recommendations and insights outlined in our analysis with respect to PRA’s guidance.
Besides, Macro Global’s SCV Forza shines as a beacon of integrity in promoting regulatory reporting. SCV Forza is a solution that addresses various challenges related to data management and compliance in the financial industry. It provides a comprehensive view of each customer across all accounts and products, eliminating duplicate reporting and ensuring accurate identification of reportable entities.
The solution utilizes AI technology to automate data extraction and cleaning processes, reducing manual errors and improving reporting efficiency. It also includes a built-in rule engine for data validation against regulatory requirements and integrates with various third-party databases for additional validation.
SCV Forza is built on a secure Azure Cloud architecture with strong data protection measures. It can adapt to evolving regulations swiftly and offers granular reporting and audit trials for transparency and accountability. Additionally, SCV Forza offers business consulting services to help businesses manage data and implement operational best practices.
Thus, by placing strong emphasis on effective data governance, adopting cutting-edge technologies, and cultivating a culture of compliance, the trajectory of regulatory reporting could be noted for proactive involvement and sustained growth. Please do reach out to us to know the latest updates and insights into regulatory reporting landscape and stay resilient.
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