BIS Innovation Hub and Saudi G20 Presidency announce TechSprint winners

• Three winners of hackathon-style competition to highlight the potential of technology for regulators and supervisors announced.
• Winning firms FNA, Tookitaki and ISDA-REGnosys tackled challenges of dynamic information-sharing, monitoring and surveillance, and regulatory reporting.
• Winners will showcase solutions at the Singapore FinTech Festival.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Saudi G20 Presidency has announced the winners of the G20 TechSprint challenge at the conclusion of the Enabling Regulatory and Supervisory Solutions for the Digital Era symposium, hosted by Dr Ahmed Alkholifey, Governor of the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA), and Benoît Cœuré, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub.

The hackathon-style competition was launched in April to highlight the potential for technology to resolve regulatory compliance (regtech) and supervisory (suptech) challenges. The winners, chosen by an independent panel of experts, addressed one or more of its three problem topics: dynamic information-sharing, monitoring and surveillance, and regulatory reporting.

• FNA won the dynamic information-sharing category for their solution “FNA Platform for Dynamic Information Sharing and Real-Time Analytics (FNA Platform)”.
• Tookitaki won in the monitoring and surveillance category for their solution “Crypto-currency AML Typology Repository Management”.
• ISDA-REGnosys won the regulatory reporting challenge for their solution “Consistent Regulatory Reporting via the Common Domain Model”.

Governor Alkholifey said: “It was a great pleasure to announce the winners of the G20’s first-ever TechSprint initiative. The solutions showcased the importance of involving the global fintech community. Despite the disruption caused by the pandemic, we have received a great deal of interest from candidates across the globe, indicating the greater potential of joint public and private sector-led efforts to find solutions to common supervisory and regulatory problems.”

“The TechSprint has been an opportunity to showcase how global collaboration can lead to the development of high-quality regtech and suptech solutions and spur critical innovations to address our common regulatory challenges,” said Mr Cœuré.

The symposium was part of the Saudi G20 Presidency’s programme for digital era supervisory and regulatory issues. It comprised two sessions, with the first offering a platform for the final TechSprint prizewinners to share their solutions. The second tackled problems facing supervisors and financial institutions. Participants included central bank governors, deputies, and heads of international and regional financial bodies, as well as private sector experts.

The Saudi G20 Presidency is awarding cash prices of US$ 50,000 per problem solved. The winners have been invited to showcase their submissions at the Singapore FinTech Festival, which will run as a hybrid virtual event on 7-11 December, focusing on five global challenges, including building skills for the future, creating the infrastructure for a digital economy and recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.