Regulatory Change: Opportunity or Vexation?

My working week usually takes me to 2-3 different countries,
and during the course of each day I am fortunate enough to meet with the senior
business and technology leaders of Buy & Sell side firms in Europe and
Scandinavia.

A well discussed theme in the industry is the response to
market reform. The need to respond to the ever changing regulatory environment
is nothing new, neither are the varying perspectives of individual businesses
and programme teams who are charged with ensuring the compliance of their
respective organisations.

There seem to be 2 different mind sets in approaching
regulatory change, which can be summarised as follows:

1 – “Can I use regulatory change as an opportunity for me to
address long-standing issues in my business?”

2 – “How do I achieve regulatory compliance with the minimum
amount of change and expenditure?”

Now, the above statements are obviously anecdotal and they
are extreme in their polarity, but they do a good job of summarising the common
views. As a consultant, I am inclined to look for opportunity in the change
which is being thrust upon my clients. A client I worked with recently is now
taking the opportunity to create a unified treasury process across multiple
legal entities. The downstream cost saving of putting
the organisation under a unified treasury process as part of a regulatory
change programme will allow them to recover the cost of the compliance programme in less than 12 months, following the implementation of the new process.

Our natural human reaction to change, particularly change
which is inflicted upon us, is one of resistance. I really do enjoy the
conversations I have with business leaders where I can help them see change as
an opportunity to get a significant value add. All organisations need to change
something to conform to individual regulatory changes, and if you can take this
opportunity to change for the better (particularly if this change has positive
implications in operational efficiency, process optimisation and ultimate cost
reduction, etc) then surely everyone should be looking for the opportunity.

The actual question, it would seem, is not “Am I using regulatory change as an opportunity”, it’s “Can I afford not to”?