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Writer's pictureDaniel Lawlor

Brian Walsh talks #RegTech, “Fundamentals this decade. Blockchain, Machine Learning next decade."

Updated: Apr 28, 2020


We had Brian Walsh, Reitigh Software, over to discuss #RegTech, IT, Business, Data Management and specifically his thoughts on our 2020 #RegTech Predictions that went out in January 2020.


If you haven't got your copy; Free access to 2020 Prediction here >>




 

Some of our favourite points from this conversation include:


1. Big Data and the 3 Vs:


Velocity, Volume, Variety >> the vast majority of FS firms do not have big data. Basically, you are not Facebook. However, the reasons why FS firms are in pain over their data is due to silo'd business users and silo'd IT users. Data Management fails because there's such a split between business users who understand the business domain and the terms specific to the business and IT users who understand the technology and understand how to get things into the data warehouse.



2. Software is eating the world and the Amazon example.


Software is going to take over financial service companies.


Recently, Amazon has gone into health insurance in the US. So they signed a deal with Berkshire Hathaway, they signed a deal with JP Morgan to provide health insurance. And they way they have approached that problem is exactly the way a software company would approach the problem. So software companies have this idea of 'dog food-ing'. Dog Fooding basically means that you use your own software yourself, and you find issues by doing it yourself.


So when Amazon went into the health insurance space, what they did was provide health insurance for their own employees. Amazon have enough of a work force that they said "We're going to find out the issues and the kinks of providing health insurance by providing health insurance to our own people. And when they figured out all those kinks, they roll it out to the wider market."



3. When disruption does happen, it's going to be violent.


An extreme disruption because there has been complacency that has come into the market. Because you don't have to innovate, you don't have college kids starting a ManCo. This will be a violent fast change. It won't be slow and that is down to complacency of the market.... and...



4. Minimum compliance vs. finance transformation


is a real thing.



5. Data Management & Reporting...but...


I do think you are right about reporting. There is going to be more reporting. But the way of driving this is not to focus on "Now I have to do EMIR reporting", "Now I have to do SFTR reporting", but instead getting a unified view of my data.










 


Oh! And the Innovator's Dilemma got a plug! Here's what Brian had to say about that in the context of #RegTech


There's a great book called "The Innovator's Dilemma" which basically says that there are two kinds of innovation.


- Sustaining Innovation, where you're gonna try and do better for your existing customers, you're going to try make things, you're going to perform better service for the customers that you already have.


- Disruptive Innovation, where you are going to start off with something that's quite niche, something that very few people do. And that is ultimately going to become the main way that business functions in the future.


2020 #RegTech Predictions has been updated as a result of this conversation. Many thanks to Brian for his time, insights and making sure Aquest continues to do better.




 


2020 Predictions has since been updated to reflect Brian's thoughts on #RegTech and 2020. That excerpt is here for your reference.



 


If you have seen our 2020 predictions and feel you want to challenge them in an upcoming edition of the Aquest podcast, we'd love to hear from you. anne@aquest.ie


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