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This study aims to identify European positioning on the use of remote customer onboarding solutions in combating financial crime.

This study is a desktop research that examines European Banking Authority (EBA) policy statements relating to the use of innovative solutions in combating financial crime.

Technological advancements in biometric data and software tools provide a unique opportunity to address potential paper customer onboarding process deficiencies. Electronic remote customer onboarding solutions equip credit, financial institutions and investment firms with an alternative FTE cost-saving solution, in their pursuit of revenue generation. Whilst the EBA and Financial Action Task Force have provided approval for the utilisation of innovative solutions and AML technologies in combatting financial crime. Hesitancy remains on the ability of credit and financial institutions to use technological solutions as a “magic solution” in preventing the materialisation of money laundering/terrorist financing related risks. Analysis of policy suggests a gravitation towards the increased use of the aforementioned technologies in the interim.

Capitalisation of European banking authority.

The paper’s aim is to consider how best to formulate sturdy regulatory frameworks for RegTech and SupTech. The paper appraises how key features of EU and UK regulatory and policy initiatives can contribute to a functional framework for RegTech and SupTech.

The paper refers to the most comprehensive empirical findings within the EU and the UK on RegTech and SupTech, including reports released by the European Banking Authority and the Bank of England. As data is only gradually becoming available about the true rate of adoption of RegTech and SupTech, the paper identifies salient areas that warrant analysis from emerging findings. In light of the relatively restricted sources of empirical data, the article’s methodological approach is directed towards the most wide-ranging and detailed sources that are currently available at EU and UK levels.

The paper reveals distinct variations in how the EU and UK have pursued regulatory approaches towards RegTech and SupTech growth. However, there are many shared features in the respective approaches. The paper argues that a regulatory framework should ideally be imbued with overarching strategies and policy objectives, as well as with practical measures through innovation facilitators, such as sandboxes. Yet, legislative (top-down) intervention will be the significant ingredient in guaranteeing legal clarity for RegTech and SupTech.

By understanding the nuances in EU and UK approaches, the paper advocates for pragmatic reasoning when formulating a regulatory response. The importance of the article is in its focus on the elements of EU and UK regulatory approaches that are most capable of guaranteeing clarity on standards relating to RegTech and SupTech. The paper makes a vital contribution to existing commentary by determining how a balance can be struck between “top-down” and “bottom-up” types of regulation (i.e. should regulation be entirely concerned with industry-driven standards, such as codes of conduct?).

Drawing insights from institutional theory, this paper aims to examine whether and to what extent banks have reconfigured their management control systems (MCSs) in response to growing institutional pressures towards sustainability, understood as environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues.

The authors conducted an exploratory study at the three largest Italian banking groups to shed light on changes made in MCSs to account for ESG issues. The analysis is based on 12 semi-structured interviews with managers from the sustainability and controls areas, as well as from other relevant operational areas particularly concerned with the integration process of ESG issues. Additionally, secondary data sources were used. The Malmi and Brown (2008) MCS framework, consisting of a package of five types of formal and informal control mechanisms, was used to structure and analyse the empirical data.

The examined banks widely implemented numerous changes to their MCSs as a response to the heightened sustainability pressures from regulatory bodies and stakeholders. In particular, with the exception of action planning, the results show an extensive integration of ESG issues into the five control mechanisms of Malmi and Brown’s framework, namely, long-term planning, cybernetic, reward/compensation, administrative and cultural controls.

By identifying the approaches banks followed in reconfiguring traditional MCSs, this research sheds light on how adequate MCSs can promote banks’ “sustainable behaviours”. The results can, thus, contribute to defining best practices on how MCSs can be redesigned to support the integration of ESG issues into the banks’ way of doing business.

Overall, the findings support the theoretical assertion that institutional pressures influence the design of banks’ MCSs, and that both formal and informal controls are necessary to ensure a real engagement towards sustainability. More specifically, this study reveals that MCSs, by encompassing both formal and informal controls, are central to enabling banks to appropriately understand, plan and control the transition towards business models fully oriented to the integration of ESG issues. Thereby, this allows banks to effectively respond to the increased stakeholder demands around ESG concerns.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and investigate how intensified regulatory requirements related to outsourcing have influenced and changed the outsourcing activities of German financial institutions.

The study involved interviewing 11 outsourcing experts in the German financial sector, including four of the five largest banks in Germany. In coding and analysing the collected data, this study adopted the approach of a qualitative content analysis framework.

The study found that the revised legal requirements have had a significant and potentially negative impact on the efficiency of outsourcing, leading to a necessity for German financial institutions to internally realign their outsourcing managements. The study further revealed practical realigned methods German financial institutions executed to meet the legal requirements.

The impact, meaning and relevance of legal requirements in the outsourcing environment of German financial institutions has been relatively under-researched from a qualitative perspective and focused on other primary fields of investigation like outsourcing decisions and outcomes. This study has, by adopting a qualitative approach, addressed the identified gap by providing first-hand insights and new knowledge.

Based on the agency and resource dependence theories, this study aims to investigate whether nomination committee (NC) characteristics could serve as key attributes for reducing environmental, social and governance (ESG) disputes and whether NC composition affects the appointment of ESG-friendly directors to the board.

This study focuses on a sample of 30 global systemically important banks from 2015 to 2021. The authors estimate panel data models with fixed effects, clustering heteroskedastic standard errors at the bank level to account for the serial correlation of the dependent variables for each bank.

Banks’ exposure to ESG controversies can be reduced when NC members have specific skills, in particular when at least one member of this committee also belongs to the sustainability committee and is a foreign director. Moreover, banks’ ESG disputes decrease when the NC members are younger, while the share of independent NC members has a negative impact. Finally, a positive influence of NC composition and its members’ features as well as the appointment of ESG-friendly directors on the board is found.

The findings are particularly useful during periods such as the current one, when there is growing attention to both banks’ corporate governance, the subcommittees’ role and functioning and social and environmental issues. This study shows that the NC is important in reducing the likelihood of banks incurring ESG disputes and in appointing more ESG-friendly directors. NC effective functioning and its members’ qualities serve as a key attribute for fulfilling objective assessment and improving board effectiveness.

This paper aims to focus on the relation between digital transformation and banks’ reputation, as examined through the information disclosed by the five largest Italian banking groups’ efforts to extend and enhance their digital resources. Considering digitalization as a key strategy for managing reputation, which, in turn, can leverage financial and value performance management, the paper investigates whether and how digital activities might affect banks’ reputation. Therefore, this paper proposes the relationship between digitalization and reputation as a lever for performance management and for increasing efficiency.

The authors use content analysis to generate a digital disclosure index, categorizing activities human, structural and relational. For banks’ reputations, the proxies are a measure of corporate reputation and a reputational risk index. Methodologically the study used multiple case studies, considered as particularly suitable to gain an in-depth understanding of the topic in the case of the five banks. A collection of secondary data and semi-structured interviews are included.

Overall, the digitalization-reputation link shows that banks’ reputation is variously affected, not only by exposure to risk (including reputational risk) but also by strategic issues such as digitalization and the effectiveness of the corresponding communication. Consequently, banks should view digitalization as a key driver to be considered not in a stand-alone perspective, but in a combined approach.

Continued research should include the Covid-19 implications. Additionally, it would be important to compare a larger number of banks, with different characteristics, also including variables indicating the corporate governance mechanisms.

The analysis contributes to fostering scholars’ and practitioners’ management of the digital transformation challenge that is a current key-factor, capable of increasing banks’ value. It considers not only the drivers directly affecting monetary value but also the institutions’ social and relational value, as well as their reputation.

This paper extends prior research on the digitalization-reputation relation by investigating digital transformation through disclosure of activities in this area within the Italian banking sector. It allows to leverage the key-factors that can contribute to increasing banks’ value, considering not only the drivers directly affecting monetary value but also the institutions’ social and relational value, as well as their reputation.

This paper aims to critically examine the European Union’s legislative initiative to establish an Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), which will introduce union-level supervision and provide support to national supervisors in the field of anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT), as well as to financial intelligence units (FIUs) in European Union (EU) member states. The paper discusses why this initiative was deemed necessary, which are the key objectives, rules and principles of AMLA and which challenges and opportunities will emerge as AMLA becomes operational.

This paper draws on reports, legislation, legal scholarship and other open-source data on the EU legislative initiative to establish a new AMLA.

AMLA will provide a comprehensive framework for EU-level AML/CFT supervision and for cooperation among FIUs. If all organisational challenges are properly addressed, the new authority will significantly enhance the EU’s ability to tackle money laundering and terrorism financing.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is one of the first to examine the mission, governance and supervision mechanisms of the EU’s AMLA, as well as the challenges and opportunities associated with its functioning.