FCA fines highlight the need for better customer support
Sabrina Del Prete
Sabrina Del Prete is a leading digital strategist and business transformation expert specialising in FinTech integration and development within financial services. Sabrina founded financial product governance and data analytics business Kore Labs in 2017 and is serving as the firm’s CEO. She also remains actively involved in the wider entrepreneurial community as a strategic advisor. She sits on the London Institute of Banking and Finance’s Board of Governors and is a Founding Member of the Centre for Digital Banking and Finance.
As one of the financial services industry’s pre-eminent champions of RegTech and its ability to revolutionise connectivity and compliance, we appreciate Sabrina offering her expertise on our recent webinar dissecting the Wealth and Asset Management 4.0 study.
During the discussion, Sabrina gave indispensable advice on how technology can help bridge communication gaps between departments and unlock new efficiencies.
Here’s what we learned:
Received wisdom would have us believe that the client’s journey begins when they first interact with your firm’s website, app or another external contact point. And so it’s understandable that firms regularly pour significant resources into creating the most attractive and convenient client-facing platforms possible.
In reality, the client’s experience is heavily influenced by what comes before then, what’s happening within the firm to root out inefficiencies and roadblocks that may manifest later down the line.
For this reason, Sabrina suggests: “Many firms would be better served focusing their digital transformation inwards to ensure they’re able to adapt to both regulatory requirements and clients’ evolving needs.”
Focused externally only, you run the risk of endlessly tweaking your website menus whilst deeper internal problems continue unabated – which at best breeds inefficiency and at worst could lead to unsuitable advice or products being recommended.
In an era where more and more back-office tasks are automated, firms should be seizing the opportunity to embed best practice within their day-to-day activities.
As Sabrina notes: “Compliance should be hard-wired into the very way processes are carried out, as opposed to being achieved via a box-ticking exercise at the finishing line.”
In other words, businesses need to make sure compliance is embedded directly into the way they work. And by leveraging digital tools to help along the way, best practice can be hard-wired into system – and altered as and when policies changed – to drive positive cultural change.
Where the moving target of regulatory expectations once left compliance teams perilously vulnerable to human error, RegTech now offers firms the tools and guidance to meet their obligations at speed. And not only that, as rules come and go, RegTech platforms can easily be updated to ensure your compliance framework is always fit for the future.
Whilst many regional variations remain, it’s fair to say that regulators worldwide are moving in a similar direction of travel. And that’s little surprise given they largely operate under the same guiding principles.
Despite this, firms still all too often react to new legislation in an insular manner – be it hiring consultants to look at their unique situation, or otherwise taking an ‘every man for himself’ approach to achieving their own compliance.
The truth is we’re not all that different. That’s why, for Sabrina, the most effective path to success could lie in a shared platform where firms can work collaboratively through these early adjustment phases:
“Clients say to me, “don’t ask me ‘how’s my process?’, show me what the others are doing!” – because there may be some best practice there.
“If we have a digital solution that’s used by multiple organisations, that takes the digital process from inside the bank to outside – where people can contribute – effectively, you’re collecting the wisdom of the crowd.”
To listen to Sabrina’s take on how RegTech can ‘join the dots’ towards more efficient compliance processes, watch our full Five-Minute Insights video now: