One of the keynote speeches at the Thomson Reuters Australian Regulatory Summit in Sydney yesterday was delivered by Anna Bligh, chief executive officer of the Australian Banking Association.Below is an edited version of some of the main themes she covered.Bligh's take on regulation was that there were three factors underpinning a "fundamental re-set" of the industry: major regulatory change - notably the Banking Executive Accountability Regime and the start of the Comprehensive Credit Reporting; technology - in this context, where technological change intersects with the regulatory sphere; and the consumer, causing a transfer of power from institutions to customers.Among the threats or opportunities that will emerge from the regulatory change, Bligh named three: Open Data and how that might apply in banks and other parts of the economy; the New Payments Platform; and the entry of new, non-ADI players into the banking sector. Moving away from the theme of three, Bligh said that since the GFC (just on a decade) there had been 57 federal inquiries, reviews or investigations into Australia's banking system. "They have resulted in 420 recommendations, many of which have either been implemented or are in the process of being implemented. That's without any change that might come about due to the royal commission," Bligh said. Of these, the change she spent the most time dissecting was the new Banking Executive Accountability Regime, or BEAR. This regime focuses on individual accountability within banking institutions and has potential if done right to powerfully shift culture.BEAR will start on 1 July for the major banks, with small and medium ADIs given a further 12-month extension to implement and required to be part of the regime from 1 July 2019."The equivalent regime in the UK from where BEAR originated, was implemented over a three-year period and the Prudential Regulation Authority in the UK is still consulting on the design of their regime," Bligh said."The initiative goes directly to conduct as well as to culture, both of which are at the heart of the royal commission's work. "Comprehensive Credit Reporting is a second example and requires our major banks to fully participate in the new credit reporting system, also by 1 July this year."CCR as it's become known, will have an impact on credit assessments and lending practice, all of which are the subject of royal commission consideration and we could see further proposals out of that process that may or may not impact on how CCR is most effectively rolled out in the interests of customers.  "So the complexity of the task at hand for regulators who are being provided with entirely new and significant powers and the banking sector should not be underestimated," Bligh said.