In this edition of GovTalks, we chatted with Laurence Kiddle, Partner at Evelyn Partners, about the challenges of modern finance and regulatory environments, his vision for the future of GRC, and more.

Welcome to GovTalks - Cygnetise’s new interview series dedicated to exploring the multifaceted world of Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), and the transformative role of Regulatory Technology (RegTech). GovTalks brings together thought leaders, industry experts, and trailblazers to shed light on these complexities. If you’d like to be featured and share your story, get in touch here.

In this third edition of GovTalks, we spoke to Laurence Kiddle, Partner at Evelyn Partners. With over two decades of experience in finance, tax, and regulatory technologies, Laurence has held significant roles in both multinational corporations and scale-ups. Since joining Evelyn Partners, Laurence has played a key role in guiding clients through today’s compliance complexities by utilizing the latest tech solutions in the sector and improving and streamlining internal processes and operations.

Evelyn Partners, a leading wealth management and professional services group, has been at the forefront of providing innovative solutions in tax, regulatory, and financial management. The firm prides itself on its ability to adapt to the rapidly changing regulatory environment and to offer tailored advice and services to its diverse clientele. Laurence joined Evelyn Partners from ARKK, the leading regulatory reporting tech scale-up, where he served as a CEO and board advisor.

In our interview with Laurence, we discussed his career journey so far, the challenges of modern finance and regulatory environments, a real-life case of when tech has significantly impacted governance, and his vision for the future of GRC.

Read Laurence’s complete story below.

Laurence, you’ve held significant roles in both tax technology and regulatory technology. Can you share what initially drew you to this field and how your passion has evolved over the years?

First up – I’m not sure anyone dreams of a career in RegTech. I originally wanted to be an explorer. But this area has been consistently stimulating, interesting, and varied for the 24 years I have been involved with it. I’ve been lucky enough to see it through the lens of MNCs and scale-ups, software providers and consultancies, and with a bit of industry time thrown in. Each role has informed the next – and it's never been boring!

More generally, tax and regulatory technology bring together two fields that are constantly changing and moving increasingly quickly. Tax and regulation generally are driven by a complex series of levers including the wider economy, political pressures, the continued evolution of business models, and consumer behavior. There’s a constant intellectual challenge in how new regimes are interpreted and how we can ‘solve’ them.

Technology moves equally quickly. I started on a graduate scheme at Arthur Andersen in 2000. I loved my new laptop, even though it weighed as much as a brick – but some partners still had their emails printed out by their secretaries, and licensing our Corporate Tax software involved a faxed order form and sequentially inserting 17 floppy discs into each desktop PC. It’s fair to say we have moved on a little since then.

Holding leadership positions in various capacities, including at Thomson Reuters and Deloitte, what are some key leadership lessons you’ve learned? How have these experiences shaped your approach to technology and team management?

I’ve worked in some very different organisations. A Big 4 Accounting Firm is very different from a scale-up SaaS business, and they measure success in different ways. But having a strong culture is, I believe, at the heart of every successful business.

There is that old, variously attributed management meme, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” In many ways, it is an artificial distinction – a strong culture depends at least in part on the organization having a clear strategy – but it does emphasise the importance of having the right people, in the right roles, in the right organisation.

And the right culture creates accountability and personal responsibility; it prioritizes team success, ahead of the individual; and it has a clear eye on the metrics and levers that drive business success.

Throughout your career, you’ve worked to simplify the complex tax, finance, and regulatory functions for businesses. What do you consider the most challenging aspects of modern finance and regulatory environments?

One of the main issues is the sheer volume of regulation. Generally speaking, back-office functions like Finance, Regulatory, and Tax, do two main things. They manage all the compliance obligations of the business – national minimum wage, statutory accounts, and regulatory filings. Call this the ‘stay out of jail’ part of the role. And they also add huge value to the business, through activities like forecasting, generating management information and reporting, and many others. Most of these teams are getting so swamped by the ‘stay out of jail’ that they barely have time to partner with the business – this affects the quality of work for individuals in the team, and ultimately the effectiveness of the function and the business.

And of course, these regulations are not static. Keeping up-to-date with them can be very challenging.

Technology can be a great enabler to these teams. And this doesn’t have to be great big platform solutions to do the heavy lifting – although these definitely have their place. There are some great data-wrangling tools that can replace very manual spreadsheet processes, for example – and, even though the technology has been around for many years, increasing the use of robotic process automation to take out repetitive manual steps. And that’s without the obligatory mention of generative AI! Small steps can make a lot of difference.

Given your advisory and CEO role in building out tech strategies at firms like Farfetch, Silverfin, and ARKK, what advice would you give to organisations looking to implement RegTech solutions today? What common pitfalls should they avoid?

There are four cornerstones of any successful function – people, process, technology, and data. Working in technology, it is very easy to get focused on the latest bit of shiny technology, but change management is an often neglected but critically important part of any project.

Working as a consultant now rather than as part of a tech firm, I’d also observe that it’s not necessarily product features or functionality that are the key things to look out for. There’s obviously an entry-level competence point. But once this is met, the critical points are generally non-technical. How easily does it integrate with the existing IT infrastructure? Does it fit with existing processes or do they need to be redesigned? Does it form an integral part of someone’s role or is it an add-on? How easily does it flex to changing business processes?

Could you share a case study or an example from your career where technology significantly impacted regulatory compliance or governance?

We’re seeing this in real-time with CESOP – this is a piece of reporting for payment service providers. It’s unusual in that it is EC-mandated regulatory filing but administered by indirect tax authorities. We are providing outsourced services for registration and filing, which are delivered using different regtech providers. The registration process has varied from one of our directors becoming a digital citizen in Estonia to submitting apostatised documentation, complete with red wax seals, in Spain – and with diverse filing regimes to match. Some PSPs are submitting many millions of records each quarter. This is effectively technology-led regulation – it would not be possible without the capacity for competent authorities to ingest previously unimaginable quantities of data, let alone process and audit it. And similarly, it would not be possible for PSPs, or their outsource partners, to comply with the regulations without using diverse and connected technology solutions to extract, transform, format, test, and submit these data sets.

As someone deeply entrenched in the intersection of technology and regulation, what is your vision for the future of governance, risk, and compliance?

The skills required in regulatory compliance are increasingly closer to data science than more traditional skill sets. And I don’t see this changing! We’ve gone through a transition from an analogue compliance world to a digital one. This shifts the balance between businesses and regulators.

Regulators have the ability to cut and slice huge volumes of data and can benchmark across peer groups and analyze trends in ways that they could not before – and crucially, in ways that individual businesses cannot. What these businesses do own, though, is their own narratives. The process of firstly generating the data, and then interpreting it and telling the story through their own business lens, is going to be a shift in the way that many functions operate.

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GovTalk with Laurence Kiddle on regtech adoption best practices and the future of GRC