Agenda

08:30 - 08:55: Conference waiting room opens

08:55 – 09:00: Chair’s welcome
Hannah McGrath, Editor, FStech

09:00 – 09:30: Keynote Speaker
Francesca Hopwood-Road, Head of RegTech and Advanced Analytics, Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)

The FCA’s Head of RegTech will share her insights on how innovative RegTech is helping financial services firms keep up with the pace of change in 2021 and will give an update on the regulator’s own initiatives to foster innovation in the sector and integrate data and technology within its day to day operations.

09:30 – 10:00: Automating assurance while increasing efficiency over risk & controls
Jack Leech, Strategic Partnerships Manager, Galvanize
Tom Ryan, Senior Solutions Consultant, Galvanize

Banks and financial services firms are faced with ever-increasing pressure to deliver greater levels of assurance over a complex set of emerging risks, and in the current climate, they are responding to these demands without always being granted additional resources. In this session, Tom Ryan, senior solutions consultant and Jack Leech, Strategic Partnerships Manager at Galvanize, explore how establishing a universal data model across all three lines of defense and leveraging automation technology, machine learning and data from existing systems can help risk, compliance and audit teams deliver insights on risk exposure and control effectiveness in near real-time.

10:00 – 10:30: Future-proofing the KYC ecosystem
Dalbir Sahota, Vice President, Bankers Almanac KYC, Accuity

While innovation is rapidly changing the financial ecosystem, many banks, FinTechs and other NBFIs are still struggling with KYC compliance – wrestling with legacy software, multiple files, separate systems, and manual checks. How can companies take advantage of emerging technology to bring their KYC processes up to speed? In this session, Dalbir Sahota from Accuity will discuss the challenges for the future of KYC, including integration, automation and APIs.

10:30 – 11:00: Panel - The buck stops here: Just how strong are 'bank-grade' AML controls and what is the role of SM&CR responsibility?
Panellists:
Gerard Hurley, Chief Compliance Officer, Chip
Robin Penfold, Partner, TLT
Igor Sumkovski, Senior Manager for Financial Crime Oversight and Advisory, Santander
Tristan van der Vijver, Global Head of Compliance, Vice Chair, Western Union Business Solutions

2020 saw a radical shift in the threat landscape for financial institutions: from a spike in fraud as criminals sought to exploit the pandemic, to increased use of crypto currencies and an explosion in online transactions. This increasingly complex operating environment coincided with the introduction of the EU’s 6th Anti-Money Laundering directive in December, with key changes in corporate and individual responsibility for breaches, data sharing, and a focus on the ways compliance teams are adapting to the digital economy. This panel session will explore how FSIs are evolving a risk-based approach to money laundering and how automated technologies are helping to manage compliance.

11:00 – 11:15: Coffee break

11:15 – 11:45: The failures of static DLP and how to protect against tomorrow’s email breaches
Sudeep Venkatesh, Chief Product Officer, Egress

Data breaches caused by outbound email are prolific. In the last 12 months, 93 per cent of financial organisations experienced security incidents where email use put sensitive data at risk, at a rate of one incident every 12 working hours. This presentation from Egress will explore how legacy email DLP technologies have failed to protect sensitive information and uphold compliance, and how contextual machine learning offers a scalable alternative that can keep regulated data secure.

11:45 – 12:15: The dangers of ‘Intelligent’ Algorithms: Regulation of the new generation of self-programming AI algorithms
Professor Philip Treleaven, Professor of Computing, UCL
Dr Adriano Koshiyama, Research Fellow in Computer Science, UCL

Soon there will be billions of ‘intelligent’ algorithms interacting with each other and with humans with minimal oversight. As we speak, AI algorithms are making vital decisions: from autonomous vehicles and trading systems, to medical treatment, employment, and offender sentencing, among many others. But amid this rapid progress, companies and regulators are increasingly alarmed about algorithms reinforcing bias causing major financial or reputational damage. This presentation from Professor Philip Treleaven, professor of computing at UCL and Director of the UK Centre for Financial Computing will explore high profile case studies of algorithms going awry, how governments are responding through legislation and imposing bans while regulators step up fines on companies and the Judiciary discusses making algorithms artificial persons in Law.

12:15 – 12:45: Panel - Biometrics coming of age: just how quick can onboarding safely get?
Panellists:
Maria Khan, Digital Product Owner, NatWest
Steve Robertson, Compliance Industry Consultant and Moderator
Jayakumar Venkataraman, Partner, Banking, Financial Services and Insurance, Infosys Consulting
Harry Weber-Brown, Director of Digital Innovation, TISA

In this panel expert speakers take a deep dive into the growth of biometric authentication in financial services and its role in improving the customer experience. The discussion covers the race to digitally onboard customers quickly using biometrics including facial, fingerprint and video technologies while FS providers work to stay compliant with KYC, AML and other onboarding requirements.

12:45 – 13:05: Lunch break

13:05 – 13:35: Your Digital Footprint = A Hacker’s Toolkit
Robyn Savage, Customer Success Lead, Tessian

Every photo we post, status we update, person we tag, and place we check-in to reveals valuable information about our personal and professional lives. This data enables hackers to craft more targeted, more believable, and - most importantly - more effective social engineering attacks. But, there are some simple habits which can help to protect your employees and organizations from these attacks.This session with Robyn Savage, Customer Success Lead at Tessian, offers top tricks for outsmarting the cyber criminals.

13:35 – 14:05: Panel - Staying compliant in a crisis: How to cope with changing regulations during a pandemic
Panellists:
David Ehrich, Co-Founder and Executive Director, The Alliance for Innovative Regulation (AIR)
Tosha Ellison, COO, FINOS
Jeffrey Mushens, Technical Policy Director, TISA
Wim Nelen, CEO and Founder, Single Rulebook
Ruth Wandhofer, Non-Executive Director and RegTech expert

The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought wide-ranging disruption for the industry, with unscrupulous fraudsters and cyber criminals rushing to exploit the uncertainty. Regulators have responded with new rules and regimes designed to protect consumers and ensure that banks are still fulfilling requirements even when onboarding is digital and staff are working remotely. As a result, financial services are having to move quickly to adapt systems, protect data and upskill their workforce. This panel will explore how the crisis has affected the compliance function and look at key challenges and solutions for those tasked with keeping the regulators happy.

14:05 – 14:35: To Compliance and Beyond: Adopting a Proactive Cybersecurity Posture
Rick Mischka,Technical Product Sales, BluVector
Travis Rosiek, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer, BluVector

Meeting compliance requirements is a daunting task, but if everyone stops at being compliant, then they all share the same cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Compliance requirements dramatically lag behind cyber adversaries’ tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) and do not address single points of failure in IT systems. In this session, Travis Rosiek and Rick Mischka take a fresh look at why cybersecurity solutions fail in a feature-driven culture, how the rush to tick compliance checkboxes doesn’t target actual risks, and why too many organizations operate under the assumption of security.

14:35 – 15:05: Address Emerging Risk with AI Powered Risk Management
Scott Bridgen, GRC Consulting Director, OneTrust, GRC

The digitalization of financial services is in full flight, as financial institutions strive to offer the same levels of service and improved customer experience that consumer markets have enjoyed for some time. This digitalization - providing seamless access to appropriate services on demand - requires great emphasis on client data. In this session, Scott Bridgen from One Trust will review some of the dynamic elements that pose growing operational and reputational risk, including data sprawl, shadow IT and privacy regulations. He’ll explore how investments and expansion in Artificial Intelligence can help inform decision making and highlight blind spots to surface issues that may otherwise go unnoticed.

15:05 - 15:35: AI and RegTech: What role do humans now play in responding to the changing regulatory environment? Sponsored by Compliance.AI
Panellists:
Kayvan Alikhani, Co-Founder and CEO, Compliance.ai
Richard Maton, Strategic Initiatives Lead, The International RegTech Association
Elizabeth Start, Risk and Compliance Director, Heward Mills
Irina Velkova, Senior Manager, Grant Thornton
Colin Ware, Regulatory Product Manager, BNY Mellon

It is often difficult to separate the hype around AI technology from the reality. But one area that has made steady advances in helping companies to respond to the shifting sands of regulation has been machine learning: whether it be inputting text from regulatory handbooks using Natural Language Processing (NLP) or automate time-consuming tasks, this technology has come into its own. However, as many firms have found, removing human judgement from the process altogether can prove costly. This panel will explore the changing role of AI and machine learning within the compliance function and take a deep dive into why some are turning towards processes including ‘expert in the loop’ to build human-assisted machine learning models.

15:35 - 15:55: The key challenges and opportunities for FinTech regulation
Claire Magennis, Head of Risk and Compliance, NatWest Ventures

Challenger banks and FinTechs have revolutionised the UK banking market, providing user-friendly digital solutions for consumers and business owners. However, most challengers are under huge commercial pressure to sell products which enable them to generate revenue and profit quickly – which often comes with complex and wide-ranging regulatory issues. In this presentation, Claire Magennis, Head of Controls for NatWest Ventures will explore the key priorities for FinTechs as they seek to scale while keeping the regulators happy.

15:55 – 16:25: Keynote speaker: Digital Transformation in Central Banking
Sholtana Begum, Head of RegTech, The Bank of England and Prudential Regulation Authority

In the last keynote session of the day, we’ll hear from the Bank of England’s Head of RegTech, Sholthana Begum with an exploration of how the Bank of England is using data and new technologies to advance its digital capabilities.

16:25 – 16:30: Chair's closing remarks and end of conference