The Financial Stability Board (FSB) published a report on the use of supervisory (suptech) and regulatory (regtech) technology by FSB members and regulated institutions. The report contains a variety of case studies giving practical examples of deployment of suptech and regtech tools. These include a number of examples related to the COVID-19 experience, which has served both to increase interest in suptech and regtech, but also to illustrate where authorities have been able to deploy these solutions to support remote working, crisis response and enhanced surveillance and supervision.
For authorities, the use of suptech could improve oversight, surveillance and analytical capabilities, and generate real-time indicators of risk to support forward looking, judgement based, supervision and policymaking. For regulated institutions, the use of regtech could improve compliance outcomes, enhance risk management capabilities, and generate new insights into the business for improved decision-making. For both authorities and regulated institutions, the efficiency and effectiveness gains, and possible improvement in quality arising from automation of previously manual processes, is a significant consideration.
Based on a survey of FSB members, the majority of respondents had a suptech, innovation or data strategy in place, with the use of such strategies growing significantly since 2016. Authorities are also vigilant to possible risks that could arise from the use of suptech and regtech technologies. Survey responses indicated that the risk reported to be of greatest concern was around resourcing, followed by cyber risk, reputational risk and data quality issues.
A particular risk is over-reliance on methods built on historic data, which could lead to incorrect inferences about the future, and the potential for limited transparency of suptech and regtech tools. Looking to the future, the potentially catalytic role of data standards and the importance of effective governance frameworks for the use of suptech and regtech were also emphasized.
The use of suptech and regtech have been boosted by the substantial increase in availability and granularity of data, and new infrastructure such as cloud computing and application programming interfaces. These allow large data sets to be collected, stored and analysed more efficiently. Authorities and regulated institutions have both turned to these technologies to help them manage the increased regulatory requirements that were put in place after the 2008 financial crisis.