The FCA has published a feedback statement on digital regulatory reporting. This follows the FCA’s call for input on smarter regulatory reporting in February 2018.
The FCA found that most respondents agreed that there are significant potential benefits to be gained by introducing digital regulatory reporting, with the most commonly cited benefit being increased efficiency. However, some respondents believe the efforts and costs involved in implementing digital regulatory reporting would not be outweighed by the benefits; and that digital regulatory reporting would be difficult to achieve for firms that store data in multiple legacy systems and differing formats.
The FCA commented although its investigative work is at an early stage, its current position is that implementing digital regulatory reporting is a concept the industry considers worth investigating further.
The FCA has been running a pilot with the Bank of England and various organisations, aimed to further explore whether digital regulatory reporting is possible and to further explore some of the issues that we identified in the call for input. Following the conclusion of the pilot work in November, the pilot participants will publish a technical paper in Q1 2019.