Enlisting Internal and External Financial Gatekeepers: Problems of Multiple Centres of Knowledge Construction

Abstract

AbstractOver the last decade complexity has impaired financial regulators’ and supervisors’ ability to cope with informational asymmetries, moral hazards and other market failures. Recent regulatory responses have been to include external auditors in the range of “gatekeepers” and “watchdogs” that serve regulatory objectives. On the other hand, the compliance function gained greater prominence as a form of internalised law enforcement, being increasingly seen as facilitating the achievement of public regulatory needs in maintaining the safety and soundness of financial institutions. Yet, uncertainty has pervaded the issue of what modes of interaction supervisors, compliance and external auditors should be subject to. International experience and anecdotal evidence show, in fact, that the current informal, discretion-based, relationship between such gatekeepers brings about risks of knowledge fragmentation and ambiguity, calling for better gathering and use of “gatekeepers’ knowledge”. The objective of this article is to address and rectify problems of multiple centres of knowledge construction, by approaching questions pertaining to the interaction between the “internal” and “external” gatekeepers. A primary contribution of this article is to examine this problem by reconciling the strand of research concerning multiple gatekeepers´ liability and the developing legal scholarship on compliance as a delegated form of external enforcement. The explanatory nature of multiple gatekeepers’ liability is twofold: first, it contributes in emphasising the complexity stemming from the interactions between multiple gatekeepers; second, it offers a solid working hypothesis to detect the market failures that can arise from such complexity, namely relating to fragmentation – and construction – of knowledge.