How does FinTech, LawTech, and RegTech more than co-exist but actually converge and relate powerfully? It’s more than merely sharing the “Tech” tag.

“FinTech needs to come with LawTech. LawTech needs RegTech. The convergence is needed.” Adeline Chin, Co-Founder of LawTech Malaysia

Defined: Tech

  • FinTech: Financial Technology is the usage of technology to support banking and financial services. Today, new companies are disrupting traditional companies with wide-ranging solutions including e-wallets, micro loans, and cryptocurrencies.
  • LawTech: A.k.a. Legal Technology, enhances legal work and reduces labour intensive work. It enables and replaces traditional searches and investigation, digitizes files, and makes legal work simpler.
  • RegTech: Regulatory Technology helps improve regulatory compliance. RegTech checks for compliance in all areas and passes regulatory requirements including government regulation, cyber security, health care, and tax management.

 

“You should spend time doing what you love and not running around like a headless, dead, tired chicken.” ~ GK Ganesan Kasinathan, Co-Chairperson of Bar Council – IT, Innovation & Future in Technology Committee (FIT)

Why: Tech?

  • Technology is easy and its primary purpose is to make your life easier with a better experience. Think of how the wheel or even the abacus transformed the world in the past.
  • Machine learning uses technology to process large amount of data, reduce man hours required, and allows smaller size transactions at a much lower cost.
  • Distributed ledger technology (DLT) like blockchain allow for decentralization, immutability, security, transparency, and helps solves liquidity issues in finance.

 

“Malaysia has the right elements to become a competitive FinTech hub for the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). In addition, the cost and ease of doing business in Malaysia are being improved as the government is focused on making FinTech one of the key elements to catalyze the digital economic initiatives in making Malaysia a high-income nation in the next 5 to 10 years.” Mohammad Ridzuan Abdul Aziz, President of FinTech Association of Malaysia (FAOM)

Future: Tech

  • Malaysia has key advantages including amazing talent, world leaders for Islamic economy and finance, and a mature infrastructure and legal framework.
  • We are cost effective with 24m adults, a hungry market of 28.1m, and with more than 90% own a banking account.
  • We have coordinated support from Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and various other government agencies, simple and cost-effective taxation, and a speedy go to market (GTM) time frame.

 

“Regulators (including Bank Negara) are actively advocating for FinTech to be an integral part of the national initiative to drive digitalization to remain competitive.” ~Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia

Deep Dive: RegTech

We dive deeper into Regulatory Technology as it is relatively new in Malaysia.

  • RegTech is required to process data which is increasingly digital and can be both structured or unstructured.
  • The volume of regulatory requirements is immense, multi-dimensional, and growing exponentially.
  • Complexity is increased with the need for expert system solutions, extremely fast input and output speed, and the ability to handle risks (enterprise, systematic, black swan).

What do you want to know about FinTech, LawTech and/or RegTech?