Policy-Driven Frontend Governance in Regulated Financial Enterprises

Abstract

In regulated financial ecosystems, financial services providers are increasingly facing the challenge of balancing growing throughput and the requirement for speed in delivering digital services with evolving regulations. Frontend systems, as the primary point of interaction between regulated entities and end users, are thus at the epicenter of this challenge. While frontend layers are fundamental to regulated financial systems, their systematic governance within platform ecosystems has too often received less attention than backend infrastructure or data governance. We argue that policy-driven frontend governance is an important architectural and organizational property of regulated financial platforms. Leveraging existing research in software information systems development, security and privacy engineering, and digital platform governance, we contribute a framework for embedding compliance behaviors in front-end systems. Our framework consists of patterns of composable elements, risk-based review, automation-based conformity, governance-informed architecture, and the organizational and cultural capabilities to support frontend governance at scale. By presenting a framework for frontend governance, we contribute to the information systems literature by viewing frontend governance as a first-class concern, complementing existing work on backend governance and infrastructure governance.