What if someone built an antivirus to monitor online finance and detect financial crime in real time?

This is a whitepaper I wrote ahead of an IOSCO summit in Toronto in 2017 (involving ~20 leading financial regulators). I was trying to suggest something new: a smart, efficient, automated tool that regulators can use to scan the internet and enforce crimes and breaches of regulation in real time.

As far as consumer protection goes, financial regulators were designed as “sheriff’s offices”. For many years, they were in control at the “small towns” they were tasked with protecting. But the internet has made the financial services industry less of a small town and more like Gotham City: huge, dynamic, chaotic and full of crime. The recent rise of cryptocurrencies and ICO’s only makes it clearer that enforcing regulations today is a whole different task, and regulators are under-equipped to perform it.

This work is the result of a few conversations with Bendicte Nolens, the Head of Strategy at the SFC (the independent statutory body charged with regulating the securities and futures markets in Hong Kong – the equivalent of the SEC in the US).

I still don’t know if it’s a company worth starting. But I believe it’s at least an idea worth sharing. Would love to hear your feedback.