The association is made up of individuals and organisations from various sectors including financial services.

A community of individuals and organisations have joined together to launch the non-profit International RegTech Association (IRTA), in a bid to innovate the future of regulatory technology across several sectors including financial services.

Sponsored and funded by its members, the IRTA hopes to accelerate the evolution of regtech through integration, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing, it said in a statement yesterday.

The IRTA will operate in key markets and economies internationally; represent the interest of regtech providers and consumers - including financial institutions - and engage with financial regulators and academics, and collaborate with other international organisations.

“The IRTA believes in the globally integrated, hybrid ecosystem, and supports the premise that the whole is very much greater than the sum of the parts,” said Subas Roy, newly appointed global chair at IRTA. “The IRTA community is a combination of talented, agile and experienced minds, striving for innovation, and to establish regtech as a profession for the years to come.”

“We stand in one of the most exciting times, as the innovation and international collaboration for regtech continue to expand,” Roy added. “For the first time in over 40 years, innovation in regtech is taking precedence over innovation in new financial services markets and products. This reflects the fundamental, enabling role of regtech, and how it is already helping to shape and determine the future of financial services, including its competitive advantage.”

The executive board of the IRTA will be made up of 23 people across a variety of industries including; regtech, legal and compliance, academics, bankers, practitioners and visionaries. The board will determine the strategy, working policies and code of ethics of the association. Members will be from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania.

Also, the IRTA will operate three regtech advisory councils, which will look at standards development and research, innovation and adoption for regulators, and innovation and adoption for the wider market. The leaders of the councils will be vice-chair of innovation Diana Parades, regulatory relations head Michael Meyer and head of wider markets Steven Burman.

This publication reported in April that financial services firm SEI invited three firms to participate in its regtech incubator Codify in London. The firms were Coinfirm, a blockchain technology company; Encforcd, a regulatory intelligence service; and Neuroprofiler, a MiFID II-compliant customer risk profiler.