Transfer agents need to start paying more attention to the regulatory challenges affecting their customers, according to panellists at ITAS in Luxembourg.
When asked which area of business is likely to be affected by regulation in the next few months, William Gilson, an independent director, suggested that, actually, “the transfer agency world has had it relatively easy in the last few years”.
Gilson pointed specifically to the issue of data regulation, saying this is “fairly critical” for transfer agents as “I don’t think that the transfer agency world is set up to forget a client”.
The audience of transfer agency professionals was warned that, although these regulatory issues generally affect asset managers more, they are currently setting up teams to tackle the challenges, and those teams are in the process of drawing up due diligence questionnaires, for transfer agents. Gilson said: “You’re going to be inundated.”
He warned that transfer agents will soon have to answer a lot of questions, and added: “It’s up to you whether you want to do it efficiently or not.”
Nirvana Farhadi, CEO of FFS-RegTech Services, agreed that data requirements will have “a key impact on the industry”, suggesting that firms need to consider where, and who, they are going to get their data from.
These requirements are not going to subside, she said, and firms should look at what they have in place and use technology to help build sufficient and robust infrastructure that can reduce costs and increase efficiency.
