Bank of New York Mellon : “Digital Transformation and Fintech” Kick Off Tax and Regulatory Client Forum

Several major BNY Mellon tax and regulatory clients gathered at BNY Mellon's New York office for the third annual BNY Mellon Tax and Regulatory Client Forum. The well-attended event featured 44 BNY Mellon and client speakers that discussed key trends impacting the tax and regulatory landscape.

According to a panel of financial professionals who discussed how digital transformation and fintech is creating opportunities for market participants and regulators- technology is helping to influence business change and could have a transformative effect in the financial services industry and tax space.

The panelists agreed that, while some areas may be more mature than others, it is still somewhat early days in leveraging emerging technology in the tax and regulatory sector. Below is a snapshot of today's major panel themes, as moderated by Mariano Giralt, Head of Global Tax Services, BNY Mellon:

Mark Shivers, Head of Robotics Process Automation, BNY Mellon Client Service Delivery shared his thoughts about why digital transformation and fintech are helping to generate a major buzz among technologists and regulators today. 'Millennials graduating with finance and accounting degrees are more technically astute than ever before. That combined with the maturity of new technology solutions like robotic process automation are promoting new and exciting ways to automate legacy processes.' Adding, 'this as the new industrial revolution in financial services where we are taking the robot out of the people to free them up to apply more of their cognitive skills to their jobs. After all, those cognitive skills are what makes us human to begin with and what sets us apart from any technology that simply automates a repetitive process or can predict patterns.' At BNY Mellon, we're training robots to do mundane, repetitive tasks and so our employees can focus on providing value add to clients.'

Lior Glass, Blockchain Business Expert, BNY Mellon Emerging Business and Technology, discussed how the cost of technology implementation has dropped exponentially and is creating opportunities for competition and disruption. 'It used to cost $50,000 to launch a tech start-up in the 90's, however, today it only cost $500 to create a minimum viable product hosted on a public cloud.' Concluding, 'We're also seeing an increase in willingness and pro-activeness from regulatory bodies who want to learn how technology can be applied to help improve the financial services and tax space.'