By FINTECH Books Contributor, Patrick Butler Follow: @peebleton  The 2008 financial crisis continues as economies falter. This can be attributed to the loss of public trust in banking. In response, Regulators have changed their focus from control design to outcomes. They focus on behaviour and culture – or conduct – and individual accountability, while expanding enforcement, developing more prescriptive regulation (MiFID 2, MAD2, PSD2, UK Structural reform) and bringing greater anti-competitive pressure to bear on incumbents. There are two key constructive routes for banks and asset managers to improve profitability. 1. Innovate in response to meet changing customer expectation, accelerate delivery and transparency while reducing cost of delivery. 2. Strengthen compliance capabilities to rebuild trust and avoid the increasing regulatory fines that damage profits and thus returns to shareholders, while damaging reputation, share-price and so putting pressure their ability to meet new, more stringent liquidity requirements. This has created a fertile ground for RegTech players to offer innovative, nimble solutions. Look to the drivers and key areas for attention to provide some signposts to guide entrepreneurs and incumbents alike to prioritise efforts. However, in all the excitement, both disruptors and incumbent institutions alike should take a breath and reassess the innovation process. They need to apply the same, outcome-based, medium to long-term thinking to all decision making. It requires particular behavioural awareness to address complex conflicts of interest, identify true synergies and the pitfalls of short-termism inherent in the design of solutions.  This is critical to ensure new products services and processes continue to deliver the outcomes intended. Such integrated Regulatory Risk Management thinking aligns with the UK Conduct agenda and its equivalents in other major financial markets. It is the sine qua non for sustainable cultural change in finance expected by the regulators and necessary to rebuild trust and thus support economic recovery.