If your professional interests take you to the crossroads of financial services, regulation, compliance, and digital – especially data analytics and machine learning – which altogether is known as regtech, you are in the right place. You are part of statistically small and very geek-oriented professional community, but you know this, and though you might choose not to admit this to strangers at this year’s festive parties for fear of causing great pain by boredom, you are in good company with this Contributor and my interviewee.

I first met Jo Ann Barefoot when I was chairing the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Industry Sandbox Consultation, where she provided excellent guidance and insights. Jo Ann is one of the most dedicated and busiest advocates of the regtech space on the planet and is truly outstanding in both her knowledge and passion in this area.

She dedicates her time to a number of global bodies and initiatives related to regtech: she is a Senior Fellow Emerita at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Business & Government, a Senior Advisor to the Omidyar network, sits on the fintech advisory committee for FINRA, is an Executive Board Member of the International RegTech Association (IRTA), is a member of the Milken Institute U.S. FinTech Advisory Committee, and chairs the boards of the Center for Financial Services Innovation and FinRegLab.

A former Deputy Comptroller of the Currency and staff member at the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, she is the CEO of Barefoot Innovation Group, the Co-Founder of Hummingbird Regtech, an angel investor, advises financial companies and governments worldwide, delivers a regular podcast with global industry specialists on RegTech, and if all of that is not enough, she is writing a book on financial innovation and regulation.

If you want to understand how technology and the digital revolution will impact regulation and compliance in financial services, Jo Ann Barefoot should be one of your global gotos.

Jo Ann is in London speaking at the RegTech Rising Summit this week so I took the opportunity to get her views on this often technical subject and get us excited about where retech is going.

Lawrence Wintermeyer: Jo Ann, you do a lot of work in the new field of “regtech.” Can you give us a simple definition of regtech, and tell us who is excited about it?

Jo Ann Barefoot: You’re right about the excitement, which is notable since most people don’t find financial regulation exciting. Something truly new is happening.

“Regtech” is new-generation technology that’s transforming financial regulation and compliance. The same technologies that are remaking everything else, like big data, artificial intelligence, blockchains, cloud computing and voice interface, are revolutionizing the regulatory realm too. They offer the tantalizing prospect of improving regulatory results and cutting costs, at the same time.

Both regulators and regtech firms are attacking pain points in the regulatory chain. Examples include creating “machine-readable” regulations; automating reporting interfaces to enable continuous monitoring of risk; using AI to scan securities market information for signs of misconduct; and equipping mobile phones with chatbots so consumers can report financial scams.

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