Sibos 2010: regulation

The global financial industry is only days away from Sibos and at ACI we’re ready to go. The stand is arranged, the meetings have been set up and the events have been planned. We’ve also been giving some thought to the key themes that are being discussed throughout the week - regulation, rebuilding trust and recovery – and what they mean for the payments industry.

First of all, let’s look at regulation. There has been a rise over the last few years in the amount, breadth and frequency of regulations applied to banks. The impact of this on payments has led to banks needing to measure and mitigate operational risk to minimise loss resulting from the inadequacy or failure of internal processes, people and systems.

Achieving this can be a challenge, not least because of the use of highly automated technology in globally integrated systems which has the potential to replace the risks of manual processing errors with the risk of system failure.

In addition, the fact that certain banks are now setting themselves up as large-volume service providers in payments, perhaps through mergers or by acquisition, means that internal controls and the resilience of systems must be of the highest order.

At ACI we believe that operational resilience begins with robust funds transfer processing software, and high-availability hardware and software. This resilience is now a regulatory expectation, not just a prudent business decision, and should lead to an increase in day-to-day processing efficiencies.