Glossary term
Regulatory Reporting
Subject: Legal, Tax and Reporting, Records and Regulatory Reporting
Also known as: Regulatory returns, Regulatory filings
Regulatory reporting is the submission of required data, statements and notifications by an organisation to its regulators, on a fixed schedule or when specific events occur.
Explanation
Regulators use reports to supervise firms and spot problems early. Periodic reports, often called regulatory returns, cover matters like capital, liquidity, financial results, complaints or emissions and are filed monthly, quarterly or annually. Event-driven reports cover incidents such as a data breach, a major loss or a change in control. Filing obligations set the form, content and deadline, and many are now submitted in machine-readable formats. Accuracy is a separate duty from timeliness: a late return and a wrong return can both attract penalties, and senior managers may have to certify the figures. The work depends on data being collected from many systems, reconciled and reviewed before it leaves the firm. Supervisors read a pattern of late or corrected returns as a sign that the controls behind the numbers are weak.
Example
Two days before a quarterly solvency return is due, an insurer's finance team finds that premium data from one system was counted twice. They correct the figures, record the cause, and tell the supervisor about the earlier draft error, rather than file a number they know is wrong.
Not to be confused with
- Financial reporting
- Financial reporting serves investors and the public. Regulatory reporting serves supervisors and often uses different definitions and formats.