"The chaos we're seeing is really a reaction to the fact that the regulators have floated these enormous boats that are gathering tons of data, over 100,000 points of data in the EU alone. And they've now cut across that with a simplification directive," says PJ Di Giammarino, CEO of RegRisk, as our panel of experts settles in.
Di Giammarino is joined by Michael Nicholls, Principal of Financial Services Consulting at EPAM and Chris Owers, a Senior Director at First Derivative. Together, the trio has decades of experience in consulting and navigating the rigors of regulatory compliance.
Chaos isn’t a word you want to hear when discussing compliance with pending regulations, especially in the financial services sector. But it’s become a reality for thousands of banks across Europe and the UK thanks to last-minute pivots and sharp turns in dual-tracked MiFID 3 regulations originating from both regions. Meant to drive standardization in trade and transaction reporting, regulators from both regions have had to pump the brakes as the intent of their proposals bumped up against reality, resulting in a temporary pause.
"I think a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief. There is a lot of complexity in what's being proposed. I don't think it was a complete surprise if you look at what's happened with other regulations,” says Nicholls.
Owers follows this up with a question on how the differences between the UK and European versions – a divergent approach to regulation – are tangibly impacting clients. Nicholls responds, “if you're in a two-tier, two-speed environment where you've got to satisfy regulators in the EU and regulators in the UK, and those regulators become increasingly divergent no longer aligned, you’re going to need more complex systems, data and processes to deal with two environments.”
With this, the conversation shifts into how organizations can deal with these complex systems, touching on everything from technology and AI to the shortage of talent within the industry that’s both tech-savvy and versed in regulatory compliance. Ultimately, however, our speakers leave the conversation on a positive note, confident that today’s sprint toward AI can help organizations to even the odds in the great regulatory compliance race. As Giammarino says: “This is a time for organizations to put in robust proofs of concept and begin scaling so they can turn the rulebook into a runbook.” Listen carefully, and watch out for galloping insights!
Host: Chris Tapley
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Scott MacAllister
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon
All content for The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network is the property of EPAM Continuum and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
"The chaos we're seeing is really a reaction to the fact that the regulators have floated these enormous boats that are gathering tons of data, over 100,000 points of data in the EU alone. And they've now cut across that with a simplification directive," says PJ Di Giammarino, CEO of RegRisk, as our panel of experts settles in.
Di Giammarino is joined by Michael Nicholls, Principal of Financial Services Consulting at EPAM and Chris Owers, a Senior Director at First Derivative. Together, the trio has decades of experience in consulting and navigating the rigors of regulatory compliance.
Chaos isn’t a word you want to hear when discussing compliance with pending regulations, especially in the financial services sector. But it’s become a reality for thousands of banks across Europe and the UK thanks to last-minute pivots and sharp turns in dual-tracked MiFID 3 regulations originating from both regions. Meant to drive standardization in trade and transaction reporting, regulators from both regions have had to pump the brakes as the intent of their proposals bumped up against reality, resulting in a temporary pause.
"I think a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief. There is a lot of complexity in what's being proposed. I don't think it was a complete surprise if you look at what's happened with other regulations,” says Nicholls.
Owers follows this up with a question on how the differences between the UK and European versions – a divergent approach to regulation – are tangibly impacting clients. Nicholls responds, “if you're in a two-tier, two-speed environment where you've got to satisfy regulators in the EU and regulators in the UK, and those regulators become increasingly divergent no longer aligned, you’re going to need more complex systems, data and processes to deal with two environments.”
With this, the conversation shifts into how organizations can deal with these complex systems, touching on everything from technology and AI to the shortage of talent within the industry that’s both tech-savvy and versed in regulatory compliance. Ultimately, however, our speakers leave the conversation on a positive note, confident that today’s sprint toward AI can help organizations to even the odds in the great regulatory compliance race. As Giammarino says: “This is a time for organizations to put in robust proofs of concept and begin scaling so they can turn the rulebook into a runbook.” Listen carefully, and watch out for galloping insights!
Host: Chris Tapley
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Scott MacAllister
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon
Silo Busting 66: Operating in Ukraine with Stepan Mitish and Elaina Shekhter
The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network
30 minutes 49 seconds
2 years ago
Silo Busting 66: Operating in Ukraine with Stepan Mitish and Elaina Shekhter
In this special edition of *Silo Busting,* Elaina Shekhter, EPAM’s Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, interviews Stepan Mitish, VP and Head of Ukraine, about how his role shifted from being a leader navigating war-time crises to a leader embracing the challenges of the business world. Mitish says that the year 2022 was so filled with extreme challenges that he and his team can count it as “three or five years of experience.”
He says the experience truly seasoned his team: “We understood what a great team means, not just in theory.” In hindsight, Mitish says, the experience puts COVID in perspective: “At that time, it was something catastrophical… but now you recall it with a smile on your face."
Mitish talks about how he and his team started preparation for a potential war before it actually took place, creating a very solid business continuity plan (BCP). But if you ask whether he believed it would happen: “I didn't, and even now, for me it's hard to accept how could anybody in the 21st century do what actually was done.”
He tells the harrowing story of how it began very early one morning. Lots of messages pouring in from areas under attack. After that, “It was very loud night and morning,” he says, adding that he was focused on the quiet evacuation of our people to so-called shelters in the western part of Ukraine. Vinnytsia. Lviv. Ivano-Frankivsk. Uzhhorod.
At the beginning of the war, he was orchestrating 15,000 employees but they were working as one. He says that after a week, “I was afraid to start hearing a lot of complaints from our clients about failed delivery, non-delivery in services.” Instead, he received emails from clients “who were praising our teams for working days and nights and even delivering planned releases.”
By the second or third week, everyone understood that Russia could not do a “so-called blitzkrieg in three days” and that it wasn’t “possible to break Ukrainians and to break EPAM in Ukraine.” He says: “Despite all the challenges, all the craziness that was going on,” he and his team continued to deliver. Relentlessly.
“People were doing incredible, heroic things on the ground, but also doing delivery from bomb shelters and various faraway locations where people ended up moving to in order to avoid actually being in the midst of ongoing attacks,” says Shekhter. “From your point of view, why do you think they did it?”
Mitish says it was a combination of two things: (a) “Probably it's part of Ukrainian values or DNA to be very much focused on results”; and (b) “We don't have any other home and we understand that we fight for our lives, for our workplaces, for our families. And if not me, then who's going to do that?”
So where are we now in Ukraine?
“I believe that the worst, worst days are already behind us,” says Mitish who wants to encourage our clients and future clients to support Ukraine and bring more business there. “I strongly believe that once this war is over and Ukraine wins, there will be a huge queue of those companies’ investors… and if you're going to be on the end of the queue, probably it will be much harder to find the best talent for you and your business.”
You’ll want to listen to our resilient colleague tell his amazing story. Do so!
Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon
The EPAM Continuum Podcast Network
"The chaos we're seeing is really a reaction to the fact that the regulators have floated these enormous boats that are gathering tons of data, over 100,000 points of data in the EU alone. And they've now cut across that with a simplification directive," says PJ Di Giammarino, CEO of RegRisk, as our panel of experts settles in.
Di Giammarino is joined by Michael Nicholls, Principal of Financial Services Consulting at EPAM and Chris Owers, a Senior Director at First Derivative. Together, the trio has decades of experience in consulting and navigating the rigors of regulatory compliance.
Chaos isn’t a word you want to hear when discussing compliance with pending regulations, especially in the financial services sector. But it’s become a reality for thousands of banks across Europe and the UK thanks to last-minute pivots and sharp turns in dual-tracked MiFID 3 regulations originating from both regions. Meant to drive standardization in trade and transaction reporting, regulators from both regions have had to pump the brakes as the intent of their proposals bumped up against reality, resulting in a temporary pause.
"I think a lot of people breathed a sigh of relief. There is a lot of complexity in what's being proposed. I don't think it was a complete surprise if you look at what's happened with other regulations,” says Nicholls.
Owers follows this up with a question on how the differences between the UK and European versions – a divergent approach to regulation – are tangibly impacting clients. Nicholls responds, “if you're in a two-tier, two-speed environment where you've got to satisfy regulators in the EU and regulators in the UK, and those regulators become increasingly divergent no longer aligned, you’re going to need more complex systems, data and processes to deal with two environments.”
With this, the conversation shifts into how organizations can deal with these complex systems, touching on everything from technology and AI to the shortage of talent within the industry that’s both tech-savvy and versed in regulatory compliance. Ultimately, however, our speakers leave the conversation on a positive note, confident that today’s sprint toward AI can help organizations to even the odds in the great regulatory compliance race. As Giammarino says: “This is a time for organizations to put in robust proofs of concept and begin scaling so they can turn the rulebook into a runbook.” Listen carefully, and watch out for galloping insights!
Host: Chris Tapley
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Scott MacAllister
Executive Producer: Ken Gordon
