The world of regtech is expanding fast, so here’s a quick guide to help you navigate your way through the different services and innovative tools available.

1. What is regtech?

Regtech is the combination of regulation and technology tools developed to help organisations manage and facilitate compliance in a more efficient manner.

While the term and idea of regtech has taken a little longer to catch than its sister term ‘legaltech’, investment has ramped up and the industry has begun maturing.

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It’s common to see regtech mentioned specifically for the financial industry, however regtech isn’t just applicable to financial institutions and services. Every sector has it own rules and regulations to monitor and comply with. 

2. The regtech landscape

Regtech has been profiled by top research firms like Forrester, Gartner, CB Insights as it’s grown over time. The regtech landscape is now vast, so here are 3 main categories to help you find your way around. 

1.Regulatory Tracking 

Tools that monitor and update the raw legal content (the legislation, rules and regulations) published from its source, e.g. regulators or governments. These regtech solutions normally configure this data as a content library, regulatory feed or display this information in a resource center to make it easy to see your legal requirements.  

2. Regulatory Requirements

Solutions that go a step further than compiling and tracking raw legal content. These regtech tools provide the user with knowledge about the regulation in relation to their organisation, as well as the means to action it. For instance, filtering a specific section of law, a highlight of the requirement or the consequences that come with non-compliance.  

3. Compliance Management

The final regtech piece to the puzzle is compliance. Technologies that incorporate workflows and compliance related information specific to your business activities. These platforms enable users to track or assess their current compliance and manage their steps towards achieving compliance. 

Libryo is actually a regtech tool built to address all 3 of these areas above, but for now we’ll focus more on the regulatory tracking aspect below.

3.The power of regulatory tracking technology

The pace of regulatory change is increasing across all legal categories (financial, employment, health & safety, environmental, data security etc.) and keeping up with these changes is time-consuming, even for legal and compliance professionals. The moment you begin to multiply this effort across different operational sites, jurisdictions and languages - it quickly becomes a mammoth task to manage and know your specific legal obligations. 

Libryo has seen this first-hand just this year in relation to the Coronavirus pandemic. Over the past 9 months Libryo’s COVID-19 Regulation Tracker followed thousands of legal updates on dozens of sources in relation to Coronavirus. Across the 18 countries, we tracked hundreds of regulations that could have implications for subscribers to the solution.

According to Thomson Reuters’ 2018 Cost of Compliance Report, rule changes increased 500% over the last decade, with a new regulatory update implemented every 7 minutes!  

Regulatory tracking tools help businesses overcome these challenges by: 

• Providing efficiency gains

• Minimising organisational risk 

• Preventing human error

• Making it easy to cross-compare the law across multiple jurisdictions

• Being better prepared for audits 

• Facilitating good team alignment and collaboration

4. How Libryo’s regulatory tracking works

The world of law is complicated and always changing. Each part of your operations face obligations from a unique collection of regulatory texts. Which texts you require to answer the legal questions depend on a number of factors such as jurisdictions and operational activities. 

Libryo uses unique regulatory tracking technology to capture your organisation’s applicable laws and track them for updates. We have developed technology and processes which monitor sources of global regulation (super national through to hyper-local) for change. Our technologies include scrapers and transformers, which convert regulatory text into a uniform, cross comparable and self-describing dataset, in the proprietary LibryoXML format. Processes are overseen by Libryo's expert digital legal engineers and are constantly advancing Libryo's enrichment of the LegalXML and its record of semantic meaning captured in a knowledge graph which is linked to the LibryoXML. Libryo's Turk (micro-jobbing) programme is also leveraged to further enrich the metadata that is linked to the LibryoXML and provide value-added content useful to Libryo's customers. NLP and Machine Learning (so called "AI") technologies are also leveraged to augment the work of Libryo's Legal Engineers and Turks.

Step 1. Creating collections of law

Libryo’s legal experts source and create the collections of laws that are applicable to your operations at a site-specific level. These are called your Libryo Streams. Each Libryo Stream uses unique regulatory tracking technology to help keep you updated whenever a law changes. 

Step 2. Standardised, automated regulatory texts

The regtech platform transforms these collections of laws into a globally standardised, machine readable format which can be automatically updated.

Step 3. Simply presented and summarised

Each Libryo Stream is translated into multiple languages and simplified for fast and easy interpretation. This means you don't have to be a legal expert to know how to comply with the law. Legal highlights can be provided to you through the Libryo Platform or a third-party application.

Step 4. Automatic legal updates and notifications

Whenever your legal requirements change, you and your team will be automatically notified of the update in the platform and via email to help keep you on the front foot, always.

FAQs

1. How do regulatory tracking tools ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness across various jurisdictions and sectors?

   Regulatory tracking tools employ a combination of advanced technologies and human expertise to ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness across different jurisdictions and sectors. These tools typically utilize web scraping algorithms to gather regulatory data directly from authoritative sources such as government websites and regulatory bodies. Additionally, they employ natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning algorithms to analyze and categorize the collected data accurately. Human legal experts then review and validate the gathered information to ensure its accuracy and relevance to specific industries and geographic locations. Regular updates and audits are conducted to maintain the quality and relevance of the regulatory content.

2. Can regtech solutions like Libryo handle complex regulatory requirements that may vary significantly between organizations within the same industry?

   Yes, regtech solutions like Libryo are designed to handle complex regulatory requirements and can be customized to accommodate the specific compliance needs of different organizations within the same industry. These platforms typically offer flexibility in configuring regulatory profiles based on factors such as industry sector, geographic location, organizational structure, and specific operational activities. Users can tailor their regulatory profiles to include only the relevant laws and regulations applicable to their business, ensuring compliance with specific legal requirements while minimizing unnecessary regulatory burden. Additionally, regtech solutions often provide tools for monitoring regulatory changes, enabling organizations to stay up-to-date with evolving compliance obligations.

3. What measures are in place to address potential privacy and security concerns associated with using regtech platforms for regulatory compliance?

   Regtech platforms prioritize data privacy and security by implementing robust measures to safeguard user information and ensure compliance with relevant data protection regulations. These measures may include encryption protocols to protect data transmission, role-based access controls to restrict unauthorized access to sensitive information, regular security audits and vulnerability assessments, and compliance with industry-standard security frameworks such as ISO 27001. Additionally, regtech providers often offer transparent privacy policies and data processing agreements to reassure users about the handling of their personal and confidential data. It's advisable for organizations to conduct due diligence and review the security practices of regtech providers before adopting their solutions to ensure alignment with their own privacy and security standards.

Learn more about how Libryo’s regulatory tracking has helped other companies stay on the compliance front foot.