Managing the regulatory agenda and increasing global cooperation to limit disparities

By Adrian Burbanks, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Agricultural Bank of China (UK) Ltd

Can you please tell the Risk Insights readers a little bit about yourself, your experiences and what your current professional focus is?

Adrian is Adrian is Deputy General Manager of Agricultural Bank of China, London Branch, where he holds the SM4 position, with specific responsibility for Risk and Compliance. He was formerly CRO for Europe and the Americas at the National Bank of Abu Dhabi, and has held senior risk management positions at UBS and Merrill Lynch. His 25 years in the banking industry has included credit management roles covering most geographies, wholesale, investment banking and wealth management products, and a diversity of clients, ranging from Hedge Funds to Multinational Corporates. He has also held risk management jobs in London and Tokyo, with HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Fuji Bank.

What, for you, are the benefits of attending a conference like Risk EMEA 2019 and what can attendees expect to learn from your session?

The primary benefits of a conference like Risk EMEA come from the opportunity to share experiences with other risk professionals who struggle with the same daily challenges and hopefully learn and take away innovative solutions to seemingly insurmountable Issues. I hope delegates will benefit from the experiences that I have had over a quarter of a century of risk management and evolving regulation.

In your opinion, what can firms do to limit disparities when it comes to global regulation?

Communication, understanding and openness are key to facilitating regulatory compliance across national borders. Firms can help facilitate exchange of ideas and encourage dialogue both internally and between regulatory authorities to ensure that cultural and technical misunderstanding is avoided and find solutions which satisfy the goals of all parties.

What are the key considerations that need to be made when benchmarking against the industry?

It is important to understand that firms organize themselves in very different ways both within geographies and across borders resulting in different and diverse cultures, ownership and responsibility for risks and strategic priorities. Consequently, there Is no one size fits all set of criteria to judge one institution against another. Benchmarking therefore needs to be outcome based rather than structural.

What challenges and opportunities do you foresee when incorporating technology into the business?

Understanding how new technology will interact with existing system and how it will create new vulnerability and risk management Issues is a challenge that has provided to be the downfall of many an IT project. However, if all the necessary testing, recovery and implementation management is effective then new technology can reduce operational risk by minimizing human interaction, improve visibility to and management of risk and provide opportunities to develop innovative risk management tools. In particular, the devel0pment of AI and mobile payment platforms will continue to present both opportunity and challenge.

How do you see the impact of regulatory landscape evolving over the next 6-12 months?

In the short term the regulatory landscape is unlikely to change materially given the current global economic uncertainties, however regulators are likely to have a greater focus on the risk presented by disintermediation of lending and payments  from the traditional banking platforms, environmental risk and maintaining a keen eye of mitigation of cyber risks  and AML compliance.