Ethikom
Harness the Power of Smart Compliance

Financial services is the most heavily regulated industry across the world. As FinTech continues to evolve and grow at a rate of knots, financial services companies must stay abreast of the current new regulations, keeping their risk and compliance capabilities commensurate with their business operations and strategy. Be it the fast-paced developments in sandbox regulations in Asia or a plethora of new rules in the cryptocurrency, payments, and digital assets space, companies operating in the financial services industry need to stay ahead of diverse regulatory changes. These rapidly changing regulations, coupled with technological advancement, increased instances of digital fraud, and higher customer experience expectations, have placed financial services organizations seeking business growth and expansion in a tight spot. In this scenario, what firms need is competent, risk-focused, and practical guidance to navigate these fast-changing and complex regulations.

Enter Ethikom.

A Singapore-based compliance consultancy, Ethikom specializes in helping global financial services, FinTech, blockchain-based companies grow in Asia. Derived from the thoughtful and insightful combination of two words “ethics” and “compliance” (two critical factors for financial services), Ethikom is focused on addressing cutting-edge compliance issues affecting the financial services and FinTechs. Born with a singular focus on providing risk-focused compliance support for the fast-evolving FinTech landscape, Ethikom has evolved quickly as a reliable partner for the best strategic advice in managing regulatory compliance issues.

At the core, the service portfolio of Ethikom involves providing consultancy on the regulatory environment that can impact business decisions and strategic advice on the best approach in navigating regulatory requirements to go-to-market.

The company also empowers its clients with advice and assistance for sandbox applications and regulatory approval applications. Besides ongoing compliance advisory, the team specializes in designing governance, risk and compliance frameworks and providing independent audits or reviews. As per the requirement of each client, Ethikom also provides services for regulatory compliance training and regulatory development. “We have provided compliance and regulatory advice to the leading FinTech players in the world, start-ups (a lot of which have grown to become leaders in the FinTech space), and even regulators (in regulatory development),” states Nizam Ismail, founder and CEO, Ethikom.

Backed by a dynamic team with the breadth and depth of regulatory and compliance expertise and experience in working with clients from all over the world, Ethikom has emerged as a thought leader in the regulatory compliance space, contributing in academia, commenting on regulatory developments in mainstream media or at international fora and engaging regulators. This deep expertise also stems from the fact that Ethikom’s consultants were amongst the first to work with FinTech platforms as they emerged in Southeast Asia. “We have worked with the first platforms that were providing peer-to-peer lending, equities crowd funding, robo-advisory solutions, payments services, e-wallets, digital asset platforms, cryptocurrency exchanges, InsurTech platforms,” says Christopher Mansfield, lead consultant at Ethikom. Adding more to this rich experience, the company is driven by the zeal to work with emerging business models. Currently, the team is also advising decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms on regulatory compliance matters.

Apart from the breadth and depth of regulatory compliance experience in the region, Ethikom also finds a unique position in the industry with its practical and risk-focused approach to addressing compliance issues. Moreover, the team works as a consortium of RegTech providers to complement its services.

“We founded the Compliance Collective – a consortium of leading RegTech providers in the region – in order to provide holistic and cutting-edge solutions for our clients. Given the growing complexity of regulations and businesses, we equip our clients with RegTech to make compliance frictionless. The combination of cutting-edge consultancy and RegTech is a very powerful proposition for our clients,” extols Ismail.

To become the go-to consultancy for cutting-edge industry developments, Ethikom will continue engaging clients and regulators to reach the best regulatory solutions for the industry. Besides fostering growth and development of its consultants, Ethikom looks forward to expanding its footprint in APAC. “Given our DNA, we will be Asian-focused, but we do work with partners globally,” clarifies Ismail.