Regulations

Blog Articles

At Kidbrooke, as we deliver software driving the mathematics behind sophisticated digital customer journeys, we actively work with compliance functions of financial institutions. We strive to reach swift turn-around times without compromising on rules and financial regulations. On this journey, we found four areas which help us and our clients optimize time-to-market and deliver reliable and responsible services.

In March, Mike Winkelmann – the digital artist known as Beeple – took the art world by storm selling an NFT of his work at Christie’s for $69 million. According to the auction house, this sale positioned him among the most valuable living artists. Since this first-of-its-kind transaction, the interest in NFTs (non-fungible-tokens) specifically and digital assets in general has risen dramatically. The wealth management community has received the news with a degree of skepticism – there is a consensus that all things involving blockchain technology are too risky to consider. However, the accelerated digitalization of the economy, the continuous development of distributed ledger technology and the growing ecosystem of players in digital custody, exchange, venture capital signal that the digital assets are here to stay. In today’s blog, we discuss digital assets and their underlying value, the potential impact of the expansion of metaverse on this asset class as well as look into one of the main challenges when it comes to this type of assets – managing uncertainty.

The fourth quarter of 2019 was marked by an increased interest in B2B business models among the FinTech robo advisors. Although the shift from B2C to B2B has been in the headlines a few months before, the last three months yielded more concrete examples of how new players tailor their business models to cater to other companies, rather than consumers. Meanwhile, the debate on whether the process of financial advice would be entirely digital or contain hybrid elements continued as well - with many British players robo advisors adding human capabilities to the scope of their services. Finally, in the context of digitalised offerings, it becomes harder for the regulator to tell the difference between financial advice and guidance - and therefore it becomes essential to review the definitions of the services to optimise the consumer protection accordingly.

We are delighted to present our analysis of the top April trends within the financial industry! This month we identified the growing need for risk expertise among the asset managers striving to provide truly sustainable financial advice. Moreover, we see that a different set of factors determines the competition among the digital offerings in asset management compared to the traditional financial advisory services. Additionally, we firmly believe that it is crucial for the financial institutions to measure and prepare for the impact of the looming -IBOR transition early on, and come up with an appropriate action plan to minimise the adverse PnL effects.