Regulatory horizon scanning: where to start?

One of the key challenges faced by fintech risk, compliance and wider management teams is staying on top of the regulatory agenda. Ultimately, regulatory compliance is at the heart of your everyday business, affecting your product design, shaping organisational design, relationships with third parties and many others.

Traditionally, tracking and monitoring regulatory change (new regulations, guidance and updates from regulators and industry bodies around the world) and translating it into compliance obligations falls within the realm of horizon scanning.

So, how to get horizon scanning right?

• Scan against your risk taxonomy. Risk taxonomies help in focusing on risks that matter to your organization and identify all stakeholders potentially affected by regulatory changes;

• Dedicate time and resourcing to impact assessments. Horizon scanning is there to alert the business not only to threats of additional regulatory burden but also opportunities emerging with shifting regulatory focus. With dedicated teams in house trained at raising the "so what" question, you should also establish processes and channels to cascade the outcome of scanning to all relevant stakeholders in your organisation;

• Make it impactful. Leave spreadsheets behind, use collaborative scenario planning, visualize risk radars and involve project teams in impact analysis to understand, plan for and budget for regulatory change;

• Make in meaningful by integrating horizon scanning in your product lifecycle processes. Make sure your product managers know who and when to turn to for regulatory advice, how to embrace minimum regulatory compliance assessment standards and how to account for regulatory sign offs early enough in your product design.

At deriskd, we are strong advocates of building horizon scanning capabilities in house and keeping relevant expertise internally instead of relying on generic third party regulatory updates.

To learn more about tools, techniques and processes allowing to integrate horizon scanning into your risk function, just give us a shout at hello@deriskd.com.