On 26 April 2023, the FCA published a speech by its Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of Authorisations, Emily Shepperd, delivered at City Week 2023. In her speech, Ms Shepperd discusses how regulation can help the UK lead in fintech. Topics covered in the speech include: Ms Shepperd concludes her speech by remarking that … Continue Reading
On 25 April 2023, the FCA published a speech by its Executive Director of Markets and Executive Director of International, Sarah Pritchard, at City Week 2023. The speech focuses on the regulation of digital assets in the UK. In her speech, Ms Pritchard notes the rapid growth in digital assets in the UK. She warns … Continue Reading
Introduction In a landmark decision on the legal status of digital assets in Hong Kong handed down on 31 March 2023, the Court of First Instance, in Re Gatecoin Limited[1], has ruled that cryptocurrencies satisfy the definition of “property” under Hong Kong law and are capable of being held on trust. The case arose in connection … Continue Reading
On 19 April 2023, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published the 2022 report on quality and use of transaction data. The report highlights the increased use of transaction data by EU financial regulatory authorities in their day-to-day supervision and identifies significant quality improvements following a new approach to data monitoring. In addition, it … Continue Reading
On 19 April 2023, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Bank of England (BoE) co-published Project Meridian. Project Meridian is a joint project between the BIS Innovation Hub London Centre and the BoE. It investigates how recent rapid advances in financial technology could deliver innovations in real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems, which sit … Continue Reading
On 17 April 2023, the FCA published a speech by Jessica Rusu, FCA Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer, at the Innovate Finance Global Summit. The speech focused on innovation, artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of financial regulation. Ms Rusu begins by noting that, in the past 2 years, the FCA has completely refreshed … Continue Reading
In two recent webinars, we explore some of the key situations in which AI liability can arise and consider what businesses (including financial institutions) can do to manage these risks. Regulatory liability – In this session, we explore the regulatory framework that governs the use of AI through the lens of the proposed EU AI … Continue Reading
On 13 April 2023, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) published a Final Report on recommendations to achieve greater convergence in cyber incident reporting. The report notes that cyber incidents are rapidly growing in frequency and sophistication. At the same time, the cyber threat landscape is expanding amid digital transformation, increased dependencies on third-party service providers … Continue Reading
On 11 April 2023, the FCA announced that it would be leading the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN)’s first ever virtual Greenwashing TechSprint. The TechSprint will be hosted on the FCA’s Digital Sandbox and aims to bring together international regulators, firms and innovators to address sustainable finance as a collective priority. UK-based firms are invited … Continue Reading
In a special edition of our FinTech Pulse podcast series, US partners Stephen Aschettino, Andrew Lom and Kevin Harnisch discuss the recent uptick in regulatory enforcement activity from federal regulators against crypto exchanges, with the SEC issuing a Wells Notice to Coinbase and suing Beaxy, and the CFTC suing Binance and seeking permanent injunctions to … Continue Reading
On 27 March 2023, HM Treasury published a draft of The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) (Amendment) Order 2023, along with a draft explanatory memorandum. The draft statutory instrument (SI) proposes to expand the scope of the financial promotion restriction in section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA), … Continue Reading
Every month we provide the Global Blockchain Business Council’s Post-Trade Distributed Ledger group with a global regulatory FinTech updater, the latest version of which can be found here. Post Trade Distributed Ledger (PTDL) Group is composed of over 40 prominent market infrastructure stakeholders whose shared vision of the use of distributed ledger technology has brought … Continue Reading
On 16 February 2023, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) published a report on the financial stability risks of decentralised finance (DeFi). The report describes DeFi as an umbrella term commonly used to describe a variety of services in crypto-asset markets that are intended to replicate some functions of the traditional financial system by seemingly disintermediating … Continue Reading
On 14 February 2023, the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) published a report on advancing macroprudential tools for cyber resilience. The report has been published given the recent geopolitical backdrop of heightened cyber risk, and the need to boost cyber resilience. The report builds on previous work by the ESRB to prevent and mitigate risks … Continue Reading
On 9 February 2023, the FCA published Feedback Statement 23/1 ‘Synthetic Data Call for Input Feedback Statement’ (FS23/1). Introduction In March 2022, the FCA published a Call for Input seeking feedback on the benefits and limitations of synthetic data in resolving the challenges of data sharing, the use cases where synthetic data can provide benefits … Continue Reading
On 7 February 2023, the Bank of England (BoE) published a speech by Sir Jon Cunliffe (Deputy Governor, Financial Stability), given at UK Finance, on the digital pound. The speech begins by setting out the headline conclusions from the recent report from the BoE – HM Treasury Taskforce on the introduction in the UK of … Continue Reading
On 8 February 2023, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published the keynote speech by Jose Manuel Campa at the AFORE’s 7th annual conference on fintech and regulation. In his speech, Mr Campa acknowledges the progress made, such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act and the Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation (MiCA). Furthermore, the proposal for the … Continue Reading
On 7 January 2023, HM Treasury and the Bank of England (BoE) published a joint Consultation Paper on the digital pound: a new form of money for households and businesses? Introduction In this consultation HM Treasury and the BoE are consulting on a proposal for a retail UK central bank digital currency (CBDC). A UK … Continue Reading
On 6 February 2023, the FCA published a statement in which it urged firms marketing cryptoassets to UK consumers to start preparing now for the new financial promotions regime. The FCA plans to publish its final rules for crypto promotions once the relevant legislation has been made. The Government announced in January 2022 its intention … Continue Reading
Every month we provide the Global Blockchain Business Council’s Post-Trade Distributed Ledger group with a global regulatory FinTech updater, the latest version of which can be found here. Post Trade Distributed Ledger (PTDL) Group is composed of over 40 prominent market infrastructure stakeholders whose shared vision of the use of distributed ledger technology has brought … Continue Reading
On 3 February 2023, HM Treasury published the following collection of Fundamental Elements documents produced by the G7 Cyber Expert Group since 2016: G7 Fundamental Elements for Effective Assessment of Cybersecurity in the financial sector (dated October 2017)… Continue Reading
On 31 January 2023, the Bank of England (BoE) published a letter sharing the thematic findings from the latest annual cycle of CBEST assessments conducted by the BoE, the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) (collectively, the regulators) on participating banks, insurers, asset and investment managers and financial market infrastructure. CBEST … Continue Reading
On 24 January 2023, the FCA published a speech by Jessica Rusu (FCA Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer) entitled Building better foundations in AI. Key points in the speech include:… Continue Reading
On 12 January 2023, the Joint Committee of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) published a thematic report on national financial education initiatives on digitalization, with a focus on cybersecurity, scams and fraud. The report is based on an analysis of the joint ESA’s thematic repository of 127 national financial education initiatives on digitalization with a … Continue Reading
