Imaginary failure: RegTech in finance

ABSTRACT The notion of ‘RegTech’ has become a buzzword for applications of emergent technologies to regulatory activities. This paper contextualises and interrogates the novelty of the RegTech phenomenon as expounded in recent years by industry practitioners, regulators and a growing chorus of scholars. Harnessing the notion of ‘imaginary’ from Science and Technology Studies, we identify a particular solutionist vision materialising across public documents from national and international financial regulators, industry organisations, as well as RegTech and consulting firms. We identify two failures of an emerging RegTech imaginary. First, is a dynamism failure in the way RegTech materialises static visions of regulation. Second, is a systems failure as the solutionist RegTech imaginary focuses on narrower, individual problems in finance at the expense of wider changes occurring since the 2007–8 global financial crisis. RegTech, we conclude, reflects continuities with a pre-crisis era and fails to tackle key market and regulatory changes occurring since. Our analysis holds implications for the turn to technological solutions in addressing persistent issues of instability in global financial governance. We point to the need for developing wider imaginaries of technological possibilities for regulation in an increasingly digital world.