Financial sector

The financial sector is currently receiving a great deal of attention in the media. The functioning of financial corporations is not only under media scrutiny, but also supervisory bodies such as the AFM (the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets) and the DNB (the Dutch central bank). Financial institutions are faced with a large amount of rapidly changing national and international regulations related to the oversight of prudential conduct and good governance. As a result of the increase in regulation, banks and insurance companies have had to reorganise and new players, such as credit unions, crowd funding platforms and investment funds, have emerged in the financial sector. This has led to an expansion in the range of different financial products. Furthermore, because achieving economies of scale is also necessary in the financial sector to generate turnover and profitability, and because alliances offer new opportunities, mergers and takeovers regularly occur. This means that asset managers, hedge funds and investment companies will join forces more often. The challenge in this playing field is to seize new opportunities and to implement complex legislation as efficiently as possible in an organisation.