Karsten Wenzlaff, Advisor
August 26th, 2025
Karsten Wenzlaff is a Crowdfunding and Fintech Expert from Germany. He is Secretary-General of Digit[...]
A Regulation Revolution In Financial Services
Forbes | | Dec 2, 2018
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.
See: Exploring cryptoasset regulation
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.
Wintermeyer: I know you’re a former bank regulator. How did you find yourself involved in the regtech space?
See: Crypto Bear Market Gives UK Regulators Breathing Space to Finalize Crypto Regulation
Barefoot: I’ve been a regulator, Senate staffer, and consultant. About five years ago, I started immersing in new technology, partly through a senior fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Business and Government. I realized that current regulation is failing in areas like consumer protection and anti-money laundering and that new technology could do better. I now focus on helping convert financial regulation to “digitally-native” design, and I’ve co-founded a regtech firm, Hummingbird, which combats money laundering.
Wintermeyer: Anti-money laundering, or AML, is one of the most advanced regtech use cases, and the statistics are frankly shocking. The UN says we currently catch less than 1 percent of global financial crime because of technology which is out of date and unscalable. What are the most promising changes emerging?
Barefoot: AML is probably the most expensive and risky regulatory area for banks -- the industry spends at least $30 billion a year to catch that minuscule fraction of cases. And remember, the crimes funded with laundered money are violent -- terrorism and global trade in drugs, weapons, endangered animals, and human beings. A million children are trafficked every year. This is easy money, highly profitable, with low chance of being caught.
Technology can change that. Financial crimes have data typologies, distinctive patterns that become easy to spot if we can consolidate and analyze enough information. Today’s machine learning tools can find the patterns, while new encryption techniques can make it safe to share data much more widely while safeguarding privacy. Technology can also fix the AML “Know-Your-Customer” rules, which currently block millions of innocent people from financial access because they lack traditional identity documents. New digital identity techniques can screen nearly everyone, cheaply and accurately.
We have the technology to do all this well. We need to update the regulations.
Wintermeyer: Regulators currently seem preoccupied with decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges as platforms for money laundering and terrorist financing, which appear marginal next to what is going on in the real global banking system. Does regtech have a role to play here?
Barefoot: Crypto bedevils policymakers because it breaks the molds and because it’s mutating too fast for traditional regulation to keep up. Blockchains arguably have higher promise, and higher risk, than any other innovation except maybe AI. They can accelerate financial processes and reduce costs, whether by moving payments on the internet or enabling new ways to raise capital. Most regulators aim for a balance between over- and under-regulating, but the learning curve is daunting. The road will be bumpy.
Wintermeyer: There is a movement globally toward financial regulators adopting “regulatory sandboxes” to assess fintech innovation in products and processes. Will we soon see regtech sandboxes where regulators could experiment with new technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchains? Will we see more regulatory sandboxes being launched by US regulators?
See: UK banks publish fintech collaboration toolkit
Barefoot: I hope so! Traditional regulatory change is slow. Technology change is fast, and accelerating. The widening gap between the two is loaded with risk for consumers, the financial system, and regulators themselves. One official has said that if regulators hold still today, they’re actually “accelerating backward.”
We can’t speed up regulatory change, soundly, unless regulators can learn faster, and that requires letting them do small-scale experimentation. Regulators throughout the world are creating sandboxes, greenhouses and reglabs: safe, risk-controlled spaces where they can try things out, study how new products and practices really work, and learn hands-on. In the US, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection has launched a sandbox-type program, as has the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). All the federal US regulators and several states have innovation initiatives launched or planned. Most focus more on testing fintech than trying regtech, but both are coming.
Wintermeyer: You often highlight a remarkable initiative of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority to test “machine-executable regulation” -- issuing some regulations in the form of computer code rather than words. Is this possible? If so, what changes will it bring?
Barefoot: The FCA is the world’s most innovative regulator and they’ve taken a breathtakingly creative step, running a test of whether some regulations could be issued in the form of code and become, in effect, self-implementing. That could drastically reduce compliance costs, mistakes, and time lags.
The experiment was held under an FCA-invented process called a “tech sprint,” which is essentially a hackathon. Experts in financial regulation and technology teamed up to translate a regulatory reporting requirement from words into code and run it against a set of test data. When the computer produced a correct report -- in ten seconds -- the participants jumped up and cheered. Think about that. When was the last time we saw banks and regulators cheering together?
Wintermeyer: US regulators participated in one of these FCA tech sprints this year, and I know some have regtech initiatives on the drawing board. What path do you see the US taking along with regtech?
See: 5 ways regulation can be a competitive advantage to British business
Barefoot: America has a uniquely fragmented regulatory structure which, for all its strengths, impedes innovation. We can’t readily change it, so we need to make it work better through more innovation and more interagency collaboration.
That’s happening. The Treasury Department issued a fintech report this year that calls on the federal financial agencies both to innovate and to coordinate. There’s a lot of momentum developing.
Continue to the full article --> here
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org
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Nov 12, 2026 Crypto market cap is calculated by multiplying an asset's reference price by its circulating supply. A token priced at $2 with 50 million units circulating has a market cap of $100 million. The calculation estimates the value of that supply at the reference price; it does not total the money investors deposited. To understand a change in the ranking, examine both inputs and the provider's definitions. A larger number can result from price changes, supply changes, or revised reporting. Establish what the two inputs represent The arithmetic is simple, but neither input is self-explanatory. “Price” may be a reference assembled from selected trading pairs and venues, rather than the last transaction on the exchange you use. A provider may exclude observations or convert quote currencies. Two services can publish different estimates because their source selection and methods differ. Circulating supply is an estimate of units treated as available in the market under a provider's rules. It may differ from the number minted, the total recorded by a contract, or the maximum permitted under a protocol's current design. Locked balances, treasury allocations, burns, and scheduled releases require interpretation. A transparent methodology matters because identical arithmetic can still use ...
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November 10, 2026 | NCFA Fintech Market Insight | Capital Markets Infrastructure And Funding, Entrepreneurs Startups Small Businesses, Equity Crowdfunding And Alternative Funding A small group of large rounds is carrying Canadian venture totals while deal count and growth stage financing remain well below recent norms. On November 10, 2026, the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association published its Q3 2026 venture capital report. Canadian companies raised $4.3 billion across 397 deals through September, only 1% less capital than a year earlier. But 23 rounds of $50 million or more represented just 6% of disclosed deals and absorbed 58% of all venture capital invested. Deal count has also fallen every year since 2021. The national total is holding up far better than the number of companies getting financed. Six Big Rounds Carried 59% Of Q3 Venture Capital Q3 produced $1.35 billion across 129 deals. Capital was 1% higher than Q2, but deal count fell 15%. Six rounds above $50 million accounted for $793 million, or 59% of the quarter’s capital. That's a decent quarter for the companies that closed those rounds, but a weak quarter for everyone else. Mega rounds above $50 million totalled $2.5 billion across 23 transactions ...
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November 10, 2026 | NCFA Fintech Market Insight | Digital Assets Blockchain And Tokenization, Capital Markets Infrastructure And Funding, Regulation And Policy Funds, Collateral And Settlement Lead Canada’s Near Term Tokenization Opportunity On November 10, 2026, the Canadian Securities Administrators published its Project Tokenization Phase 1 findings, setting out where Canadian market participants see the strongest commercial opportunities for tokenization and what regulators plan to test next. The report draws on 233 organizations, 21 bilateral meetings and 80 survey responses, along with workshops attended by 281 people in Calgary and 491 in Toronto. Participants put investment funds, private assets, collateral, treasury and settlement infrastructure ahead of public stocks as the strongest near term opportunities. The report also cuts through one of tokenization’s biggest sales pitches. Blockchain can change how an asset is recorded, transferred or settled, but it doesn't automatically create liquidity, investor demand, broader eligibility or stronger ownership rights. Those outcomes still depend on the product, market, legal structure and infrastructure around it. The CSA now plans to take specific projects into Phase 2 through a 120 day public call for proposals. Firms may be able to use existing regulatory processes, tailored regulatory treatment or bounded testing in a ...
Nov 11, 2026 A positive work environment is key for any team that wants to succeed. Team morale is crucial for productivity, motivation, and job satisfaction. Engaging in activities that lift spirits and strengthen connections can lead to great results. Creating a positive team environment requires creativity, engagement, and some fun. Each activity can strengthen connections, boost motivation, and improve workplace dynamics. When teams focus on strategies to boost morale, they work toward shared success. These activities can lead to lasting memories and help build a stronger team culture. Here are some fun strategies to help improve your team's morale and make the workplace livelier. Fun at the Arcade Visiting an arcade spot is a great way to enjoy time together and build teamwork. Imagine your team facing challenges with various games. Whether it's racing or playing team games, the arcade encourages friendly competition and bonding. These fun experiences can help reduce stress and improve relationships among coworkers. Arcades offer many options to suit diverse interests and skill levels. The lively atmosphere invites everyone to relax and take a break from their daily tasks. Shared laughter and enjoyment can lead to better communication and teamwork when you return to the ...
November 10, 2026 | Market Activity | Fundraising, Investing, Trading, Leadership, Competition, Human Capital, Health A Brokerage Race Beyond $0 Commissions On November 10, 2026, Webull Canada added Nasdaq Basic Canada, giving clients free real time Level 1 quote and trade data across Canadian listed equities. The feed provides best bid, best offer and last sale information for stocks listed on the TSX, TSX Venture, CSE and Cboe Canada. Nasdaq says its consolidated feed can reduce Level 1 market data costs by more than 60% compared with traditional Canadian data packages. Webull isn't first to give Canadian investors free real time information. The more interesting story is how quickly another paid feature is becoming part of the basic brokerage account. Wealthsimple helped normalize $0 trading in 2019, Questrade followed in 2025 and Webull dropped its own commissions in April 2026. With the headline trading fee largely gone, brokers now need other reasons for investors to move money and keep it on the platform. Who Led Canada’s Race To $0 Trading And Free Market Data Wealthsimple Trade launched nationally on March 13, 2019 with $0 commissions on Canadian and U.S. stocks and ETFs. Questrade removed commissions on listed stocks and ETFs ...
November 10, 2026 | Market Activity | Artificial Intelligence And Data, Capital Markets Infrastructure And Funding A Toronto Fintech Riskfuel Analytics Brings AI Pricing Into BBVA’s Global Markets Workflow On November 10, 2026, BBVA deployed Riskfuel Analytics' neural pricing technology inside the pre-trade structuring workflow for autocallable products on its ePricer platform. Riskfuel is a Toronto fintech founded in 2019 that builds AI models for derivatives pricing. BBVA is a global bank with a large corporate and investment banking business. The deployment puts Canadian built AI directly into the calculations used to design complex structured products at a major global bank. Riskfuel's model is trained on BBVA's own pricing engine and uses more than 4,000 market and product inputs. The company says the surrogate was tested against more than 100,000 trades and can evaluate thousands of candidate structures in under a minute. BBVA had already added AI generated investment ideas to ePricer in September. Riskfuel goes further into the workflow by speeding up the numerical pricing work while BBVA's own model remains the reference. How Riskfuel Speeds Up BBVA's Autocallable Pricing Autocallables can depend on volatility, interest rates, dividends, maturity, coupon levels and several barrier conditions. Autocallables are structured investments ...
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