Operational Taxes for Banks 2025 Conference Takeaways

Operational Taxes for Banks 2025 Conference Takeaways

On Tuesday May 20th, TAINA representatives attended the Operational Taxes for Banks 2025 Conference in London. The event featured insightful panels on the tax technology, CRS amendments and new CARF requirements highlighting the critical intersection of technology and emerging tax regulations.

Some key takeaways of noteworthy topics that interested the audience of tax professionals and experts included:

Conference Key Takeaways

• Technology and Tax: Cultural Shifts
• CRS: Addressing the practical implications
• CARF: Understanding the OECD’s new requirements

Tax Technology and the Shifts Towards Online Solutions

In the “Technology and Tax: Cultural Shifts” panel, Albert Deopaul (Deutsche Bank, Aliya Tokpayeva (JP Morgan Chase), Birgitte Sørensen (Saxo Bank), Jeroen Van Der Wal (Taxology) and Rich Kent (TAINA Technology) explored how embracing technology could help streamline tax compliance. The panellists led a spirited discussion regarding steps a firm should take to support this modern culture.

Key insights included:

• Start with the basics: Conduct time studies to identify where teams spend the most effort, then automate routine tasks. Apply the 80/20 rule—automate 80% of processes while recognizing that 20% may remain manual.

• Standardization is critical: Uniform processes reduce complexity and support scalability.

• Integration challenges: Technology alone won’t solve pain points if requirements are poorly defined. Successful integration demands clarity and collaboration.
• Low-code/no-code solutions: These tools are gaining traction, enabling tax teams to build and adapt solutions without deep technical expertise.
• Cultural convergence: There’s a growing trend of knowledge exchange between tax and tech teams. Cross-training, initially ad hoc, is evolving into structured, annual certification programs.
• Emergence of Tax Tech Officers: Institutions are appointing specialists who bridge the gap between tax and technology, translating needs and capabilities across functions.
• AI and Generative AI in tax: Rich Kent highlighted use cases such as automating withholding statement reviews, improving CRS self-certification validation processes, and enhancing data quality. AI can also assist in generating large volume of complex data for training system models.
• Data governance and AI risks: Institutions must understand what data is retained, how it’s used, and ensure agreements with AI vendors safeguard privacy and security.

This panel underscored a clear shift: tax operations are no longer siloed but are becoming deeply integrated with technology, data, and innovation.

Addressing the implications of the CRS Amendments

In the “CRS: Addressing the practical implications” panel, David Smith (HMRC), Malcolm White (HSBC), James Evans (RBC) and Scott Nice (Label Tech), outlined the Common Reporting Standard Amendments set to take effect in January 2026.

The discussion highlighted a thematic shift in the CRS landscape, emphasizing the move toward automated, end-to-end reporting and the increasing importance of data quality, integration, and regulatory alignment.

Key insights included:

• Strategic Shift: The CRS, was originally a major step toward global tax transparency. The amendments present an opportunity to move away from annual remediation and toward holistic, integrated compliance processes.

• Operational Challenges: Financial institutions face a complex and shifting regulatory environment, with overlapping regimes like FATCA, CRS, and CARF.

  • Panellists stressed the importance of prioritizing system changes, avoiding drip feeding system requirement or updates, and linking programs to leverage shared data points.
• Data and Reporting: The updated CRS schema introduces new reporting requirements including:
  • Self-certification obtained, joint account holders, account types, new or pre-existing accounts and controlling persons.
  •  Institutions must assess how to source, store, and format this data, often requiring collaboration across AML, KYC, and tax teams.
• Penalties and Compliance: With rising penalties and alignment with CARF standards, institutions must ensure robust due diligence or risk costly penalties per account, though mitigation is possible depending on circumstances.
• Role of Technology Providers:
  • Tech companies play a crucial role in helping financial institutions manage the volume, complexity, and accuracy of CRS data.
  • From onboarding to reporting, they offer solutions that streamline data collection, validation, and formatting. Their platforms can integrate with AML and KYC systems, enabling a centralized view of customer data.
  • Additionally, tax technology tools assist in compliance monitoring, and ensuring data quality meets regulatory standards

The panel dramatically concluded that the CRS Amendments are not just a compliance update—they are a catalyst for transformational change in how financial institutions manage tax reporting, data governance, and cross-functional collaboration.

Crypto Asset New Reporting Requirements

In the “CARF: Understanding the OECD’s new requirements” panel, Jenny Turner (UBS) and Corinna Hedtke (Standard Chartered), outlined the OECD Crypto Asset Reporting Framework Requirements with tracking transaction activity starting 1st January, 2026.

Key insights included:

• Broad Scope and Evolving Definitions: CARF’s wide-reaching definitions mean that even banks not offering crypto assets may fall within scope due to tokenization, distributed ledger technologies applied to traditional assets. 

• Operational Readiness: Institutions must assess whether existing processes can be adapted or if new systems are required. The panel emphasized the need to educate clients, especially in the absence of clear legislative references for customer communications.

• Nexus Rule Challenges: The waterfall of nexus rules creates complexity, especially when reporting obligations arise in jurisdictions where a bank’s branch is not CARF-participating. This raises data protection and privacy concerns, and institutions are seeking relief periods to adjust systems and processes.
• HMRC Crypto Asset Legislation & Guidance: HMRC has published initial guidance, outlining due diligence and reporting requirements including:
  • What user data is to be collected and verified from the crypto-asset user. Using a self-certification form and what information the CASP must collect for each transaction.
  • Engagement has slowed due to limited industry feedback and a lack of concrete examples. A collaborative working group is active, with further guidance expected by June 2025.
  • Penalties for non-compliance can reach £300 per user, though discretion may be applied if institutions demonstrate good-faith efforts, such as maintaining audit trails and collecting self-certifications.
• Urgency for Action: With countries going live in 2026 and more in 2027, banks are urged to start outreach now, especially for pre-existing crypto accounts. A 12-month remediation window is available, but the panel warned that HMRC has not yet answered key implementation questions, making early preparation essential.

How Can TAINA Help?

Overall, the conference underscored the evolving and complex nature of global financial reporting standards. Many items discussed will drive a change in policies and procedures, plus create new documentation requirements. Now more than ever it is important to think of an automated solution in the tax operations space and focus on automating repetitive processes. There are limits to how much we can stretch internal resources.

The TAINA Platform relieves the burden of CRS self-certification form collection and validation, as well as support to ensure accurate reporting in an integrated seamless end-to-end process.  Attending these types of events ensures TAINA is maintaining an up to date, robust and detailed ruleset meeting our clients' needs.

We would love to talk to you more about your current documentation validation process and how our award-winning FATCA and CRS Validation platform may add value to your organization.

For more information on how our fully automated platform can add value to your business, get in touch or request a demo to see it in action.