Compendor supports GDPR | data protection event for Financial Services

Next month Frankfurt Main Finance and the Association of Foreign Banks in Germany are hosting an event on the state of data protection in the financial services industry. The event is powered by Compendor, a boutique RegTech consultancy.

The event is part of the Financial Centre Breakfast series of the two organisers, and takes place for the ninth time. Around fifty professionals have been invited to the invitation-only event held at the Steigenberger Frankfurter Hof Hotel on Tuesday, April 17, 2018, with the majority of attendees holding (senior) privacy, data, compliance, finance, legal and risk roles at banks, insurance companies and other financial services institutions. 

The keynote during the event will be provided by Wojciech Wiewiórowski, Assistant European Data Protection Supervisor at the European Union in Brussels. He has held the role since December 2014, when he was appointed by a joint decision of the European Parliament and the Council for a term of five years. Before his appointment, he served as Inspector General for the Protection of Personal Data at the Polish Data Protection Authority, a position which he had held since 2010. He was also Vice Chairman of the Working Party Article 29 Group. 

Earlier in his career, Wiewiórowski was Director of the Information Technology Department within Poland’s Ministry of Interior and Administration and represented Poland in the Committee on Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (the ISA Committee). Prior to joining public administration in 2006, Wiewiórowski served as Assistant Professor and Head of the Legal IT Department at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk, with which he has been associated since 1995 when he graduated from the same university.

GDPR versus PSD2/MiFIDII/AML4

In his keynote ‘The Year of GDPR versus The Year of PSD2/MiFIDII/AML4 Data Protection in Financial Services,’ Wiewiórowski will walk through the major data protection changes which are sweeping through the financial sector. In May this year GDPR will come into effect, with its impact set to disrupt the way financial institutions gather, process and analyse data of consumers and businesses. Preparedness for GDPR however remains a concern: a December 2017 poll from RSM found that, at the time, 9 out of 10 European companies were unprepared for GDPR, while another more recent survey, held by PwC last month, found that despite the progress made, organisations are still frantically struggling to make the deadline.

The Payment Service Directive 2 (PSD2), which was formally implemented in January 2018, aims at countering the monopoly banks have on their customer's account information and payment services. The new EU directive opens the door to any company interested in gaining access to such data, down the line enabling such competition to come with more effective and value-adding services. MiFID II, short for Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II, also came into effect in January this year – this directive aims at making financial markets more efficient, resilient and transparent. It affects every organisation engaged in the dealing and processing of financial instruments. The fourth Anti Money Laundering Directive (AML4) came into force in the summer of 2017 and sets stricter rules and regulations in all EU states to combat money laundering, tax avoidance and terrorism financing. 

Combined, the different regulations represent major regulatory challenges for financial services players, with many of them looking at avenues how they can adhere to requirements while leveraging the needed transition to simultaneously implement improvements to processes, systems and business models. To this means, Compendor, a Frankfurt-based consulting firm and solutions provider specialised in regulatory compliance, has partnered with Frankfurt Main Finance and the Association of Foreign Banks in Germany to host the event. Compendor’s in-house built RegTech solution enables organisations to determine which parts of legislation are relevant and what priorities should be assigned to tasks, ensuring compliance and streamlining other activities.

Related: Compendor hires Ed Bouman to lead GDPR compliance solution for banks.