“We make progress when someone else tells us what progress to make,” said one panellist at this years’ AFME conference.
The panellists discussed the regulatory landscape, capital markets union (CMU) and European post-trade forum (EPTF) in a post-Brexit EU, including discussions over whether or not technologies will be a driver or an impediment to early success.
The attention shifted towards solutions, with one panellist pointing out, “we [the industry] have known for a long time what needs to be fixed but we haven’t done much about it.”
“Solutions arrive when those complexities are sidestepped. We saw the crisis of 2007 and 2008, which has been helpful in terms of putting in place a framework. These were things that were forced on the market. The complexities were taken away, the natural complexities fall away for the greater good.”
Continuing on this point, the speaker said: “We all want to make sure that we minimise our investment. Is it going to be Brexit or technology? It worries me when you hear about the experts on distributed ledger technology (DLT) talking about DLT as a solution.”
The speaker added: “I think this is a solution in search of a problem. So for me, this is coming about it the wrong way around.”
When considering CMU, the panellist said: “CMU is a no end state that we need to get to. What is the impact going to be of the current political trend, in a post-Brexit world, where the EU and UK are effectively in competition and competing with Asia and the US? CMU can never be an end state, it can be a theoretical goal that is just out of reach.”
“What is the trigger?” The panellist pondered, before concluding, “Left to our own devices, we don't do very much, we talk about things, we send plans to the commissions, and then express surprise when it is not the way we had planned.”
“We make progress when someone else tells us what progress to make. I want the regulators to be more directive about what they want to see, but that is a dangerous route, I might not like what they want to see.”
