Stressed Out by Compliance, Reputational Damage & Fines?

Financial services executives are living in a "regulatory pressure cooker." Here's how executives are preparing for the new compliance requirements.

Five years after the financial crisis, banks and other firms are still grappling with a growing list of regulatory reforms. Five international reforms currently weigh on the financial sector: Basel III, Dodd-Frank, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), the Alternative Investment Managers Directive (AIMD), and Globally Systemically Important Insurers.

A SunGard Financial Systems report (registration required) examines how financial services firms are living with uncertainty over which regulations will come out next. The report is based on a global survey of 400 senior financial executives; 86% said they are stressed by regulatory change. Further qualifying these results, 46% of respondents feel highly stressed, while 40% are moderately stressed.

And there is little hope for improvement; 28% expect to be highly stressed in two years, while 51% expect to be moderately stressed. What's more, firms must deal with an endlessly "multiplying panoply of regulatory authorities," since domestic regulators vie with international agencies for jurisdiction over both national markets and cross-border transactions, the report said.

Five more international reforms are still to come: Basel III, Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II), the Solvency II Directive, G20 Financial Transactions Tax (Tobin Tax), and global derivatives regulations.

 

Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio