Lombard Risk 2nd Annual Regulatory Update Conference highlights “the tsunami of regulation has become a series of overlapping waves”

Lombard Risk Management plc (Lombard Risk), a leading provider of integrated regulatory reporting and compliance and collateral management solutions for the financial services industry, hosted its 2nd Annual Regulatory Update Conference.  Held at the Andaz Hotel in London, the conference attracted double last year’s audience with 300 registered delegates from 170 firms.

This year’s conference was designed to bring the audience up-to-date with short, medium and longer term regulatory requirements, highlighting the key issues firms need to consider to meet the ‘new normal’ in a fast-changing regulatory environment.  The event included two key panel sessions and a small exhibition featuring the British Bankers Association, Katalysis, Planixs, SunGard, PWC, Accenture and Oracle.

• The presentations given at this conference are available on request. Email tom.tipping@lombardrisk.com
• REGISTER ONLINE to receive FREE monthly International Regulatory Updates from our REG-Xperts

Philip Crawford, Executive Chairman of Lombard Risk, opened the event by commenting on how “The tsunami of regulation has become a series of overlapping waves.”

“The demands made of the industry are considerable and the timeframes challenging”, he said, with the requirement to jump when regulators snap their fingers strained by the sheer level of operational change required to provide compliant processes integrated with strategic planning.  He noted that whilst regulation is often seen as a compulsory yet cumbersome process for firms, once firms are properly equipped to address their regulatory requirements they gain considerable benefits in their ability to manage their firm effectively. “We will work with you to see that is the case,” he said. “It is a benefit that is due to come out of all of this regulation, which is about running businesses appropriately and more efficiently.” James Phillips, Director of Regulatory Strategy at Lombard Risk, next composed a complex and involved picture of the Capital Requirements Regulation’s (CRR) new reporting requirements, considering not only the EU-wide supervisory reporting framework for FINancial REPorting (FINREP) and Common REPorting (COREP) but with the added category of what he called LIQREP (liquidity reporting), as national authorities such as the UK’s Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA) collect intraday liquidity data, and aspects of capital adequacy rules such as the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) come into play at the end of 2015.

Feedback from the audience included: “Information-rich, clear and concise”| “High-level coverage of all new changes” |“Educational session, well presented” | “Key challenges faced were clearly illustrated”|“Informative and not sales-pushy”| “Reinforced the size and scale of regulatory issues” |“Full structure, good speaker list”| “Very knowledgeable and great event” |“Panel extremely knowledgeable” | "Topical and relevant" |“Lots of detail”| “Knowledgeable presenters and informative presentations” |“Good forum.  Lombard Risk always provides good support"

Hanbury Hampden-Turner, Regulatory Product Functional Authority at Lombard Risk then identified the additional workload these measures could introduce for capital market firms, noting that Additional Monitoring Metrics (AMM) contain 4092 cells – per currency – of which nearly 500 would require a reporter to “Slice data in a unique way, netting it, running calculations on it and producing a result.”

The topics outlined in the event are being covered in more detail in the Lombard Risk online business briefings (webinars) over the coming months.  Guest speakers and Lombard Risk REG-Xperts will share the results of their research and experience and explain the regulations and the impact each will have on a firm’s reporting requirements (e.g. Liquidity update, PRA branch reporting, Tax regulations such as FATCA, OECD and CRS, Single supervisory mechanism (SSM), SREP and disclosure etc).  To find out more and to register online visit OUR WEBSITE. As to this significant data challenge, Tom Fish, Risk and Prudential consulting Director from PwC, said that firms typically took one of four approaches to dealing with it:

1. To fix data at source to drive better reporting – one of the more challenging approaches – which requires the building of data organisations
2. To focus on reporting metrics, striving to get the key metrics that are always needed correct
3. To attempt to define regulatory requirements and build capabilities around those requirements, a highly comprehensive approach typical of larger banks trying to tick every box
4. The final approach is to invest in new architecture in order to harness tangible business outcomes with better reporting and decision making.

Lombard Risk provides REPORTER, which is an end-to-end regulatory reporting solution for the global financial services sector used by over 300 firms globally, 160+ for Bank of England reporting and more for EBA Common Reporting here in the UK.  REPORTER enables firms to:

• Automate an end-to-end regulatory reporting process from data acquisition, standardisation through to calculation, reporting and submission
• Select from multiple deployment options that fit around existing architectures and processes that support a rapid deployment and superior solution total cost of ownership relative to other systems
• Leverage existing data sources for complete coverage of reporting requirements
• Achieve enhanced ad-hoc reporting

Lombard Risk has an unparalleled resource, possibly one of the largest UK-based teams, of financial and regulatory business matter experts.  Collectively known as the Lombard Risk REG-Xperts, they are constantly monitoring the political drivers and resultant regulatory issues, reading and interpreting the rules and using that research and knowledge in a number of ways: populating Lombard Risk REPORTER regulatory reporting software; informing and advising clients and prospects on regulatory issues; presenting online business briefings; publishing regulatory update papers.  Ask the REG-Xperts a regulatory-related questions by emailing REGinfo@lombardrisk.com.