As London Summit draws near, Finance Magnates sat down with some of the event’s speakers to get a sense of what’s coming. In this piece, we focus on Regulation and its critics.
Regulation has loomed as one of the most critical trends facing the financial services industry over the past few years. Most notably for brokers, perhaps, is the introduction ESMA regulation restricting Leverage in CFDs and cryptos. But this is not apocalypse just yet, says, Sophie Gerber in our brief interview.
What is your position and what does your role entail?
Director and Co-Founder of TRAction Fintech. I spend a lot of time helping clients get their operations started, including their integration into our reporting services, primarily in Australia, but also in Europe. I also focus on TRAction's marketing and growth, as well as the overall management.
What is the single most important market event or development in 2018 so far?
In Australia, the introduction of the new client money rules in April was a big change. It required a lot of work for our clients to adjust their client-facing documents, change their processes as well as implement the new reporting requirements and start their monthly updates to ASIC.
In Australia, the Royal Commission has been a big focus of media attention and created attention on financial services at unprecedented levels amongst the broader population.
What are the biggest challenges that the FX trading community is facing? How do they affect your field?
Regulatory change is the biggest focus at the moment. Unfortunately, that is diverting attention that could otherwise have been focused on product and technological improvements, as well as cost efficiencies, which would flow through to better outcomes for clients and lower costs.
What is the main message you’d like to convey to London Summit delegates?
We spend a lot of time encouraging our clients to remain focused on their business. Being strategic about your regulatory and operational structure is a very different approach to panicking about it.
Try not to divert your energies into a panic - as though you are in an apocalyptic event - instead, focus on how you can better manage your regulatory compliance. FX as a concept will continue as far as we can see into the future - we all need to ensure we evolve and change with it.
Sophie Gerber will be speaking at the upcoming 2018 London Summit about regulation in the APAC region and beyond. Learn more and register here today!
