Securities regulators increasingly employing tech tools to speed probes
TORONTO — Securities regulators say they are increasingly employing data analytics and other sophisticated tools to track down financial miscreants faster, but these technologies won’t be able to fully replace human judgment.
The director of enforcement at the Ontario Securities Commission said Thursday that they need these tools to crunch the “mind-numbing volume of data” the regulator takes in for investigations, and do it in weeks, not years.
Jeff Kehoe said during a panel discussion in Toronto that regulators can no longer use traditional tools and investigation techniques in the “new world for us,” with advances such as cryptocurrencies and high-frequency trading.
“It’s like finding a needle in 50 haystacks, or 100 haystacks,” he said. “And so we need tools that not only reduce the size of the haystacks but make the needles bigger.”