It was about two years ago that articles about regtech first
began hitting newsstands. The financial world had been undergoing
huge waves of new laws for about a decade, complex regulations
usually accompanied by high penalties for non-compliance. The idea
of these regulations was, generally, to make sure supervisory
authorities had accurate documentation with which to ensure a safer
marketplace for everyone, but companies faced practical drawbacks
immediately: traditional tools simply could not keep up with new
reporting demands, and so the overall costs of compliance
were rising dramatically.
Thus, the scene was ideal for regulatory
technology—regtech—to emerge. And when it did, interest
was immediate and expectations were huge. That's because
regtech proposed to use new technologies to automate as many of
these compliance tasks as possible, from analyzing data to
compiling, verifying, and submitting reports. It also promised, on
a deeper level, to help
