The RGP is a cross-department collaboration led by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at the Cambridge Judge Business School, in conjunction with the Natural Language Processing & Information Processing Group in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and led by Dr Robert Wardrop, Director of the CCAF.

The RGP was one of 17 finalists selected out of 1,250 applications for the Data.org Challenge, a global competition supported by the Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth and Rockefeller Foundation focusing on projects using data science for social good in the wake of COVID-19 and its economic impact. Up to 10 winners will be announced in January 2021.

The project plans to build and maintain an open-access repository of machine-readable information relating to financial service compliance obligations, and to train regulators and practitioners around the world in methods to convert human-readable regulatory text to a machine-readable form. Widespread adoption of the Regulatory Genome Project repository would enable the interoperability and innovation needed to realise the potential of digital financial services and reduce the cost of financial services to communities that are underserved by the financial system. The RGP technology could potentially be applied in the future to other regulated industries such as pharmaceuticals.

The RGP team believes that digital economies can deliver greater equality and economic growth by putting finance, information and control into the hands of excluded individuals and businesses. The project addresses the slow and unequal progress towards digitising regulatory information resulting from the resource constraints faced by regulators and regulated firms in developing economies. Regulatory obligations outside major English-speaking markets and financial centres are rarely machine-readable, so many regulators struggle to efficiently analyse and identify regulatory developments with the potential to reduce the exclusion of under-served customers.

“The Regulatory Genome Project aims to reduce the likelihood that digital transformation leads to greater financial exclusion around the world,” said Dr Robert Wardrop, who organised the application to the Data.org Challenge.

“We seek to create a situation where applications using machine-readable regulation can be utilised for the benefit of even the most vulnerable communities, which will improve equality in financial services by providing a de facto standard for the development of applications involving regulatory compliance.”

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance was launched in 2015 with a mission to create and transfer knowledge addressing emergent gaps in the financial sector that supports evidence-based decision-making. To date, it has collaborated with more than 120 regulatory authorities and central banks around the world on regulatory research.

Early work on the Regulatory Genome Project began in 2018, with the collaboration of the University of Cambridge with the Omidyar Foundation Fund, now Flourish Ventures. A pilot tool known as RegSimple was developed to enable low-cost, like-for-like comparison of regulatory obligations across borders, with additional funding provided by the UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office in 2019.

About Data.org

Data.org aims to forge partnerships between academia and public and private organisations to leverage the power of data science to tackle society’s greatest challenges and improve the lives of millions of people.

About the $10m Data.org Challenge

As part of Data.org’s commitment to building the field of data science for social impact, the charity launched the $10 million Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge. The Challenge is an open call for breakthrough ideas that harness the power of data science to advance shared prosperity, especially in the wake of COVID-19’s economic impact. Up to 10 winners will be awarded with data science talent, software, training, funding and other support valued from $10,000 to $10 million. Submissions were sought from individuals, organisations or collaborations from anywhere in the world with proposals for scalable and sustainable data science solutions that address societal issues and help ensure an inclusive recovery from economic crisis.

Adapted from a release originally published by Cambridge Judge Business School. For additional information, please contact Charles Goldsmith, Head of Media Relations at Cambridge Judge Business School c.goldsmith@jbs.cam.ac.uk