On the Meeting of the Interagency Task Force for Developing Electronic Cooperation in the Financial Market

The Bank of Russia held a meeting of the Interagency Task Force for Developing Electronic Cooperation (Digitalisation) in the Financial Market aimed at working out roadmaps to surmount digitalisation obstacles.

Development of electronic cooperation provides for direct paperless information exchange between all financial market participants, reporting unification (single chart of accounts under the International Financial Reporting Standards) and introduction of cutting-edge formats for financial information transmission based on XBRL standard widely used in most countries. There are plans to establish a unified system for describing financial and business indicators.

The Interagency Task Force revealed five principal problem areas hampering electronic cooperation development: legal, behavioural (psychological) and technological obstacles, outdated approaches to customer identification and possible expansion of cybercrime and fraudulent activities. A related subgroup was established and a draft roadmap was worked out for each area.

The subgroup on legal obstacles focused on such issues as a lack of regulatory system to manage electronic document flow, its duplication with paper document flow and increasing the evidential value of electronic documents in court. Other priorities include improving legislation on electronic signature, electronic document storage and destruction.

The subgroup on psychological obstacles concentrated on the ways to raise financial literacy of the population taking into account that many individuals consider electronic transactions to be less safe, complicated and not fully legitimate.

The subgroup on technological obstacles worked on developing a single ‘confidence area’ between electronic cooperation participants, surmounting technological and procedural obstacles, electronic reporting and standardisation of the regulator’s cooperation with market participants.

The subgroup on identification focused on the issues of introducing ‘a simplified identification’ and expanding the list of available operations, as well as developing data exchange standard aimed at confirming information obtained in the course of customer identification.

The subgroup on cybercrime and fraudulent activities concentrated on standardisation of ensuring information security of financial market participants and arranging their efficient cooperation with the Bank of Russia, credit institutions and law-enforcement agencies with regard to information exchange on countering cybercrime.

The meeting decided to improve draft roadmaps for all the areas. They are expected to be published till the end of 2014.

The Interagency Task Force includes representatives of the related ministries and agencies, expert community, associations and self-regulatory organisations and key market participants.

The reference to the Press Service is mandatory if you intend to use this material.

30.09.2014 00.00.00