ING and CommBank
Generate MiFID/MiFID II Obligations in 2.5 Minutes with Ascent
The Challenge: New Regulations Demand Significant Time and Cost to Map Obligations
Regulatory compliance costs financial firms billions of dollars annually. Much of this cost is a result of the exhaustive amount of time required to manually analyze regulations and determine how they impact the business — a laborious process that starts all over again with every new change in regulation.
For global banks ING and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, this manual process was not only expensive and inefficient, but also rife with human error, leaving the businesses vulnerable to regulatory risk. In a groundbreaking project overseen by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the two banks worked with Ascent to rapidly and accurately identify their obligations under two major European regulations, MiFID-II and MiFIR.
”"This was the opportunity to test some of the latest applications against complex industry regulation. When RegTech meets financial services, we create opportunities for banks, startups and regulators to collaborate and solve industry-wide challenges."
Supun King-Jayawardana
Head of London Innovation Lab, CommBank
Ascent Produces the Banks’ Obligations in Minutes, as Opposed to Months
In the past, ING and CommBank underwent a painstakingly manual process of mapping their regulatory obligations under a given regulation. This process took ING and CommBank approximately 1,800 hours of manual human effort — roughly equivalent to one full-time employee, one full year — to complete.
By contrast, Ascent completed a stunningly accurate review and analysis of MiFID-II and MiFIR in only 2.5 minutes. When lined up against the benchmarking work conducted by the two banks, Ascent’s output was proven to save hundreds of hours of manual effort at a fraction of the cost.
In other words, Ascent performed as well or better than human experts in a mere fraction of the time.
Massive Time Savings and Reduced Risk
The partnership represented a groundbreaking advancement for ING and CommBank in automatically generating their obligations. In fact, Ascent has been shown to result in a time savings of 49 percent per compliance officer per year, freeing up valuable time to tackle high-value activities, such as implementing compliance throughout the business and proactively handling exceptions.
”"Ascent assists regulated businesses in making their approach to remediation more efficient and effective over the long-term. From a legal adviser’s perspective, it means that more time and resources can be spent on helping clients develop regulatory strategy and understand the impact of, and opportunities to be gained from, regulation on their businesses."
Luke Scanlon
Head of Fintech Propositions, Pinsent Masons Law Firm
