The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is teaming with the Bank of England (BofE) to launch a blockchain-based regulatory reporting solution to tackle rising compliance costs.
While at a Mansion House gathering in the City of London, FCA chief Nikhil Rathi claimed that current regulatory reports are estimated to cost between £1.5bn to £4bn per year. Meanwhile, there was found to be 20,000 rules across 58,000 companies.
He said, “That’s why we’re working with the Bank of England on the Digital Regulatory Reporting Initiative. By connecting to firms through blockchain and API technology and implementing machine readable and executable regulation, compliance checks can be completed in near real time.”
Earlier this year, the FCA revealed it intend to extend its influence across the entire UK, opening an office in Leeds with at least a further 100 staff recruited in the first phase, while doubling its employee base in Edinburgh to over 200 in the next two years.
According to Rathi, many of the new employees will be data scientists and data analysts. The FCA has budgeted £120m to spend on its data trolling abilities over the next three years, with the aim of working faster to root out regulatory abuses.
Rathi said, “Our wholesale data Call for Input showed that some market participants believe trading data licensing fees are too complex, benchmark switching costs too high and data vendors are subject to high barriers to market entry. We’ll be publishing feedback before the end of the year and setting out what further steps we may take, considering the full range of our powers.”
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