In 2020, ACE brought together our first Regulatory Change Forum, inviting senior representatives from the four systemic Dutch banks to discuss topics like the ECB’s Risk Gap analysis and implementation roadmap, CSRD, SFRD, and the (then upcoming) ECB Climate Stress Test.
2 years later, we’re still hosting these informal gatherings, asking bank representatives to discuss regulations, regulatory change, and other challenges in a non-competitive environment.
We’re proud of how well our initiative is going, and we’re pleased to announce we’ve opened a second forum for mid-size banks.
Solving Problems Together
Working in regulatory compliance, across banks and financial organisations, it becomes increasingly obvious that all of us are facing the same issues. We’re all facing the same regulations. We all have issues with organisation, staffing, expertise, systems, etc. All of us also have slightly different experiences, insights, and views into those problems.
Bringing people together, in informal environments allows us to discuss those topics and share insight and knowledge. ACE adds to that with our own insight, by facilitating conversations, and by ensuring that everyone has the space to discuss those topics.
That informal platform provides a completely different environment than NVB-sponsored events, creating opportunities to discuss processes, share stories, and discuss how they handled topics around regulatory change.
A Second Forum
As of 2022, we now host a second Regulatory Change Forum for mid-size banks. Both this and the original Forum are held in our office space on the Zuidas, at the World Trade Center. Like the first Forum, we invite senior representatives from several mid-size banks in the Netherlands and facilitate an informal conversation around topics those representatives raise.
We hosted the first of these sessions in March, with positive feedback from all participants, including comments that this was a different and more friendly setting than one with the ECB or supervisors in place. We were also quite happy to receive questions as a follow-up, showing everyone was engaged and looking to learn from the process and the forum.
Ongoing Collaboration
Those discussions have resulted in significant collaboration, sharing ideas, and developing a broader perspective of where banks are in the regulatory change process. Even during Covid, when we often switched to Teams for safety reasons, we were able to share and learn from each other.
Shared experiences help banks to improve processes, to improve projects, and to learn from the expertise of those around us. ACE facilitates these meetings, fixing topics based on participant input, ensuring topics and conversations are ongoing, and offering deep dives and further discussion on specific topics if requested. Often, we simply facilitate and offer expertise where needed.
The Regulatory Change Forum is our way of helping the financial industry get together, to learn from each other, to cope with changing financial regulations, and to achieve financial stability. We’re grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to these goals and that our participants are finding that value. After all, it doesn’t matter how big or small the bank, we’re all facing the same laws and regulations and if we work together, we can achieve more.
If you’d like to learn more or you’d like to discuss your own regulatory change challenges with ACE, contact us to schedule a cup of coffee or a chat, we’re happy to help.