Ahead of A-Team Group’s RegTech Summit for Capital Markets in London, we caught up with Matt Smith, CEO at SteelEye, to discuss the company’s RegTech proposition, potential users, and participation in our London event.

Q: What does RegTech mean to you?

A: For me, RegTech is the application of technical innovation to reduce the complexity and cost of meeting regulatory obligations – with the bonus of improved insight from better organisation of your data. As regulatory markets continue to evolve, many financial firms impacted by new regulations are challenged by the system implications. For those lucky enough to have the resources (both in terms of human and financial capital), these burdens can still be demanding. However, for most firms, especially those smaller sized firms, resources are scarce and there are few places to turn for help.

Q: What problem does the financial institution have that you believe you can solve?

A: We believe there is a big opportunity coming out of complying with the regulations that will help regulated firms gain valuable insight into their commercial performance and operations. Under MiFID II and AIFMD, financial firms in Europe are required to store data (both communications and trade) for between five and seven years. SteelEye allows firms using our platform to leverage data not just for record keeping, but also to help meet their obligations for transaction reporting, best execution and trade reconstruction. The resulting treasure trove of consolidated data, if organised properly, can be used to gain insight and facilitate improvement across a firm's operations, with benefits for not just risk and compliance, but also cost and process improvements, and enhanced customer service.

Q: Why do they have this problem?

A: Legacy systems are typically organised like silos and don't permit easy exchange of data that is now demanded by regulators. Firms that have never undertaken an initiative to build a data warehouse are now having to do so, with very little time available to succeed in this effort.

Q: What regulations are of primary concern to you and your customers?

A: Although the main focus of SteelEye today is to help firms address MiFID II and AIFMD, our flexible innovative technology can cope with any regulation that requires financial firms to record data or report transactions. Other regulations which our platform can support are Dodd Frank, REMIT and EMIR among others.

Q: How do you solve regulatory compliance problems?

A: SteelEye brings together communications data – voice, mobile, email, instant message, Bloomberg, Reuters etc – and trade data from any order management platform, execution system or alternative sources such as spreadsheets. Our advanced data analytics and case management system allow firms to bring this data together, interrogate it and make sense of otherwise disparate information.

Q: What technology do you use?

A: Our platform is fully cloud-based enabling us to reduce the cost for our clients and apply the most advanced security capabilities to ensure our clients' data is stored in a cost-effective way and is fully encrypted and secure.

Q: How do you fit into a financial institution's architecture and data flows?

A: We are an aggregator. Client source systems feed information into the SteelEye platform. What makes us special is that after the data is stored securely for regulatory and compliance purposes, our clients can work with their information using our fully open API framework. This means not only can our clients access and control their data, but they can also build applications and models using their data in our cloud data platform.

Q: What other cool RegTech companies have you seen out there?

A: I am very excited about the AlphaExchange (https://www.alpha-exchange.com). The team there is tackling the complicated challenge of research management and unbundling with a view to revolutionising research with the concept of an open exchange for firms to trade research in a transparent way.

Q: Why are you taking part in the A-Team’s RegTech Summit for Capital Markets event?

A: The market is looking for innovators that are able to take out cost and complexity from the increasing overhead of meeting the regulatory demands imposed by governments around the world. We feel this is an excellent venue for newcomers to the market to present new thinking to firms in need of affordable solutions.

Q: What type of people are you hoping to meet at the Summit?

A: We are looking forward to meeting financial firms that are struggling with endless, complicated and conflicting regulations, and are seeking cost effective answers!