Lithuania's central bank has tested a RegTech prototype which uses Open Banking APIs to automate reporting obligations for financial services firms.
Initially tested with electronic money institutions, the Bank intends to expand the reporting universe to banks, credit unions and other market participants.
Ramūnas Baravykas, head of RegTech at the Bank of Lithuania, comments: "During the testing period, we used reports for anti-money laundering purposes, yet the range of its application is very wide."
Developed in partnership with local IT companies Columbus Lietuva and Peekdata, the prototype uses a single API to automatically collect operational data for reporting purposes from within the bank's servers.
Dovydas Zinkevičius, head of Columbus Lietuva, says: “The proposed solution does not require changing information systems used by financial institutions. All you need is to install an extra API module which would automatically collect the needed data from the institution’s databases and submit them in a standardised format to the data reception module of the supervisory authority.”
The central bank says it will take under discussion further extensions of the prototype to other market participants. Full-scale transition to the new service will first require amendments to existing legislation.