In the ever-evolving landscape of transaction reporting, 2024 looms as a pivotal year with six significant changes coming across multiple jurisdictions. These regulatory updates include Phase 2 of the CFTC Rewrite, the JFSA Rewrite, EMIR Refit (EU and UK), and updates to both ASIC and MAS. From our perspective, the success of recent implementations like CFTC Rewrite Phase 1 (2022), MAS (2021) and SFTR (2020-1)prove that careful planning and extensive engagement with customers, regulators and the rest of the market makes all the difference.

While the regulatory changes set for 2024 demand our attention, they are not the sole items on our radar. It is crucial for us to recognize that this relentless pace of regulatory change is here to stay. While working on all upcoming changes mentioned above, we are already keeping a vigilant eye on key developments like MiFID III, OFR, SEC 10c-1, but ultimately there are several core factors driving this underlying force of change.

First, financial markets operate globally nowadays. Regulators are aware of what their peers are implementing and thinking about what makes sense to adopt. In particular, there's an interest in identifying opportunities for standardization such as with the XML 20022 format or the generation and use of UPIs.

Second, as regulations are bedded down and implemented, opportunities for improvements and enhancements become visible. There's a natural and healthy desire to make the process as effective, efficient and useful as possible. This leads to the third reason for ongoing changes - Rome wasn't built in a day. When many of these regulations were first implemented, it simply wasn't practical to do everything at once. The market wasn't able or willing to manage that, the technology wasn't there, and there was still uncertainty about what was needed and achievable.

The key to managing these ongoing adaptions and updates is to future proof your regulatory reporting solutions as much as possible. In our Global Regulatory Reporting Survey last year, we saw a notable growth in hybrid solutions - where firms use a combination of vendor and in-house expertise and tools to manage their regulatory reporting. Unsurprisingly, cost is an important consideration - and finding a vendor that will reduce the Total Cost of Ownership for global regulatory reporting is a key factor - but firms also highlighted that vendors' brought additional regulatory expertise, more resources, better technology, scalability and reliability to their regulatory reporting solutions. Accounting for the upcoming changes in the next few years and beyond is an integral part of the future proofing necessary to implement new or changing regulations without also bringing huge increased costs, risks or resource requirements.

We are pleased to share that we won two prestigious European industry awards and one in North America during the quarter. These accolades reflect our commitment to the market, our customers and the pursuit of streamlined regulatory reporting processes.

On another note, I have made the heartfelt decision to step down at the end of the year to pursue my own interests. The end of 2023 will mark 3 years since Cappitech was acquired by IHS Markit and 8 years since I founded Cappitech Regulation and thus the culmination of a remarkable journey. I see this milestone as an opportunity to pass the torch to exceptionally capable hands.

As such, I want to extend my congratulations to Struan Lloyd, who has been the Global Head of Cappitech Sales and who will be taking over the running of the Cappitech business starting in 2024.

Struan's deep domain expertise and intimate knowledge of the business, makes him the natural choice for this role. Pierre Khemdoudi, Head of Regulatory Solutions, who, amongst other businesses, is responsible for our regulatory reporting business will remain at the helm and will continue to run the Cappitech business from an SVP position.

I will continue to diligently lead the business until the year's end and together with Pierre, Struan and the rest of the management team ensure a seamless transition. Thank you for your ongoing support and please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

S&P Global provides industry-leading data, software and technology platforms and managed services to tackle some of the most difficult challenges in financial markets. We help our customers better understand complicated markets, reduce risk, operate more efficiently and comply with financial regulation.

This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.