Notion of Value-Added in RegTech Research Work: What Is There for Islamic Finance?

The recent past of the financial regulations witnessed rapid changes and developments soon after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, a steady increase in the regulatory alerts doubled between 2012 and 2015. The focus toward Regulatory Technology (RegTech) gained traction since the year 2016 under the impact of fourth-industrial revolution. At the same time, the pace of new regulatory initiatives has certainly receded the repercussions of such flux that are vast and remain in play. This phenomenon raised a question among the industry stakeholders whether this increasing level of high regulation will hinder innovation and slow down the processes. The evolution of RegTech has proved quite contrary to this belief as it is ushering and emerging as a trend with a great focus of developing technological solutions to achieve greater regulatory requirements in cost-friendly and compliance implementation effectively. With an aim to identify the value-added elements of RegTech, we carried out the literature review of some important papers on RegTech published in high-impact journals like “Wiley Journal Publications” and “Scopus.” The literature review entailed that elements of cost-efficiency, trust-building as well as real-time monitoring, and reporting were among the most value-added aspects of the RegTech. However, the value-added aspects for the society at large have not been the focus of scientific research work until the mid of 2021 in the above-mentioned databases. We see the recent advancements of Web 3.0 coupled with blockchain technology has tremendous opportunity for the enhancement of Islamic finance by infusing the Shariah compliance through the appropriate model of RegTech.