FinTech Action Plan 2018
The European Commission has continued to actively participate in shaping the future of the digital economy in the European Union by publishing its FinTech Action Plan on 08 March 2018
The main purpose of the FinTech Action Plan is to present a regulatory framework for fintech businesses to easily operate within all the jurisdictions across the EU, while safeguarding the standards of cybersecurity, personal data protection and the stability of the financial and banking sector.
The aim remains the same – the EU should be a global hub for FinTech.
The Action Plan has presented steps to implement the use of new technologies that contain the following measures:
- Crowdfunding regulation
- Consistent licensing requirements for innovative business models
- Reviewing the suitability of rules and ensuring safeguards for new technologies
- Removing obstacles for rendering cloud services
The Action Plan includes the proposal to regulate crowdfunding as one of the fundamental types of access to funding for start-ups and other small businesses who mostly deal with FinTech. The idea is to harmonize the common rules across the EU and to develop crowdfunding in the EU tackling the issue of market fragmentation in order to offer the service EU-wide, which is of paramount importance for all start-ups operating within the EU.
Also, the licensing rules for new FinTech activities should be easier and more uniform by aligning standards for the operation of FinTech companies within the EU. The goal is to increase safety and ensure more opportunities for all participants to implement ground-breaking innovation in our every-day lives.
Under the Action Plan., the Supervisors of financial activities should have a more pro-active role to help FinTechs to apply rules and access the market. The Supervisors should, among other, clarify the rules to facilitate use of cloud services and assess whether the rules are adapted to new technologies (e.g. blockchain, AI etc.), as well as to be more flexible when applying such rules to FinTechs.
Finally, knowledge-transfer between the authorities is crucial, so a new “EU FinTech Lab” is to be established to increase the knowledge of technologies among EU and national authorities.
Clearly the Commission’s Action Plan is a step forward that sets out clear objectives to be achieved in the short term. We hope that the Commission’s Action Plan will be implemented adequately across the EU and create a more competitive and innovative financial market with benefits for consumers, investors, banks and new market players alike, so we eagerly wait for the introduction of the new harmonized rules in the European legal system in order to actively assist our clients their business operation.
Marko K. Bohaček
Associate
BDV
Batarelo Dvojkovic Vuchetich LLP
