KPMG named consulting firm of the year at Regulation Asia awards
KPMG has been named as the consulting firm of the year at the inaugural Regulation Asia Awards for Excellence held in Singapore.
Big Four professional services firm KPMG has taken home the inaugural Consulting Firm of the Year award at a ceremony hosted by financial regulatory media agency Regulation Asia in Singapore. The firm also received a ‘one to watch’ acknowledgement in the KYC (know your customer) Shared Ledger category, while PwC and BearingPoint were among the other firms to be honoured on the night.
Established to recognise tech, legal and consulting firms which have helped to shape the regulatory landscape in Asia Pacific over the past year, the inaugural Regulation Asia Awards for Excellence received more than 60 submissions across some 25 categories, including in such areas as Risk Data Management (won by Moody’s Analytics), Anti-Money Laundering (Datarama) and AI & Machine Learning (Silent Eight).
“Adapting to the vast number of regulations has been an ongoing challenge for financial services in Asia,” said Regulation Asia co-founder Nick Wakefield. “Technology has been the driving force behind ensuring these requirements are met. These awards recognise the significant work done by leading firms in this area, and the quality and number of submissions made this year is a testament to the strength of the industry as a whole.”
The big winner on the night was KPMG, which took home the Industry Award – recognising firms that are integral to financial services at the industry level, providing services to financial institutions, technology firms, regulators, market participants and a range of other stakeholders – for Consulting Firm of the Year, alongside Herbert Smith Freehills in the Law Firm of the Year category and the SGX as the leading exchange.According to the panel of judges, which included a range of industry experts, KPMG was honoured for “demonstrating strong domain expertise and its ability to understand the views of regulators as well as the entities they regulate, a position strengthened by its diverse team of consultants that includes compliance specialists, technology experts and former regulators.”
Sean Chen, KPMG Head of Financial Risk Management for the Asia Pacific, said of the win; “This accolade reflects the strength of our regulatory and compliance practice across ASPAC where we bring to bear a holistic breadth of experience and a deep understanding of the evolving regulatory technology and open banking landscape… It further demonstrates the commitment and drive of our compliance, technology and regulatory professionals to deliver innovative change management solutions and exceptional client service.”
Fellow Big Four firm PwC was meanwhile ‘Highly Commended’ in the category, specifically for its work in the anti-money laundering and KYC segments – “helping major banks with remediation and implementing preventative measures.” PwC according to the judges also demonstrated domain expertise in BCBS 239 (for which it took home the Implementation award), IFRS 9, data ownership, and change management among other areas.
In addition to the consulting firm of the year nod, KPMG was also won the award in the KYC Shared Ledger category – for delivering a proof-of-concept shared ledger which leverages blockchain technology to facilitate the sharing of digitised KYC information across banks – and was highly commended in the Regulatory Change Management category for developing GRC solutions that help banks in Taiwan comply with new rules requiring them to implement firm-wide risk management systems.
Other winners on the night included BearingPoint in the Tax Reporting bracket, for its standardised and ready-to-use tax reporting software, “which is in use at some of the biggest banks in Asia Pacific [the Dutch-origin firm’s FiTAX solution was recently adopted by Standard Chartered], enabling them to report to tax authorities across the world, including for FATCA and CRS, from a single centralised platform.”
Related: Deloitte posits regulatory outlook for APAC financial services sector.