Sibos, the annual technology conference, takes place this week online and with the theme of ‘Recharging Global Finance’. Though centred mainly on banking, Sibos – which is organised by the banking cooperative Swift – also considers developments relevant to the funds industry and so we asked a number of professional some Sibos-linked questions, continuing today with Ryan Cuthbertson (pictured), global head of product, financing and securities services, Standard Chartered

What is the most important regulatory issue facing asset servicers?
It’s hard to narrow down to a single regulatory challenge. Depending on your footprint and focus, everyone will have different regulatory considerations and impacts. Regulatory change in general continues to be a major focus and spending point for asset servicing providers and our clients. The Uncleared Margin Rules are moving into their phase 5 and 6 rollout, which will impact a large number of previously unaffected asset managers. The Central Securities Depositary Regulation (CSDR) will finally come into force next year. As the ESG agenda picks up momentum, Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) and the EU taxonomy are in their initial stages of rollout, but more will come. At a local market level as well, we continue to see regulators introduce new measures to drive greater risk management and asset safety at a local level.

What is the biggest challenge when developing regulatory-related products and services?
The most important issue is how to get the data that the regulation is looking for. Where does that data sit, how does it need to be reported and what is the solution for building that bridge between the data that is required and where it needs to go? Technology innovation is offering more ways to solve these problems, but the information we need often sits on several systems and with different parties. Finding, analysing and translating that data into the format in which it is needed is the most important challenge we face.

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