Financial services firms need agility
Financial services firms can only succeed in 2017 if they can respond to the current more constrained regulatory, economic, and political environment, according to Deloitte.
Deloitte's ‘2017 Asia Pacific Financial Services Regulatory Outlook' report said in 2017 the focus would turn to embedding reforms, intensifying supervision, continuous planning and testing, and dealing with emerging risks such as disruptive innovative and cyber security.
Deloitte global and Asia Pacific leader for the centre of regulatory strategy, Kevin Nixon, said financial services firms needed to respond to the changing regulatory landscape in an agile way.
"Recent political developments outside the region will also add a layer of uncertainty, particularly if there is a trend to dismantle efforts aimed at global harmonisation of regulation. Financial services firms will need to take decisive and, in some cases, bold actions in response to this current period of difficulty," he said.
The report said organisations would need to invest in innovative technology, retain ongoing engagement on regtech and needed to take an integrated cross-functional cyber resilience approach if they wanted a competitive edge.
"Firms are currently doing business in a more constraining regulatory, economic and political environment, so they need to refresh their strategies to best respond to this environment. Not all organisations will succeed in doing this in the year ahead," Nixon said.
"Those that do will be the ones that find ways of making this new environment work for them, capitalising on their resilience, agility and efficiency."
The report noted the four major regulatory themes dominating the outlook for the region were resilience, governance, supervision, and technology.
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