Daniel Carpenter, is Head of Regulation at Meritsoft, a Cognizant company.

What was the highlight of 2019?

The acquisition by Cognizant in March was a big moment for us this year, and perhaps the biggest in Meritsoft’s history. Being brought into the Cognizant framework presents huge opportunities as we look to leverage their established full suite of business support services globally. Given the global nature of the issues Meritsoft can resolve, the international presence Cognizant has will facilitate this, and a new SaaS model will enable us to reach financial houses in every corner of the world. Crucially, though, our combined technological capabilities mean we have enhanced our offering across capital markets for both existing and prospective clients.

What surprised you in 2019?

As expected, the wave of new regulations and taxes across global markets has continued this year. While this is not surprising, the complexity of these rules is. Following MiFID II, regulators have not taken their foot off of the gas and are continuing to formulate and implement new measures eg CSDR, FTT. Most of these items have global implications, adding to the already complex operational requirements supported today. These areas desperately need to be addressed by banks who haven’t made the kind of strategic changes to centralise their systems, and processes, needed to facilitate compliance and reduce operational burden. I would be surprised if steps weren’t taken by houses in 2020 to bring about this transformation.

What are your expectations for 2020?

Finance and the capital markets will continue to integrate and become more global. With markets being so intertwined, new regulations and taxes applied in one jurisdiction have a huge knock-on effect on financial houses in other jurisdictions. We’ve seen talks progress in Europe around financial transaction taxes (FTTs), and these will also be applied to transactions by American and Asian financial houses. There are also regulations such as the Central Securities Depository Regulation (CSDR) that are coming from Europe but will still pull-in global market participants. I expect more regulations of this nature and houses doing more to address the operational challenges they pose.