On 21 December 2016, the Dutch Minister of Finance (the Minister) published a letter in which he informs the Dutch Parliament on developments around innovative initiatives undertaken by the Dutch government and financial supervisory authorities in the Dutch financial sector to achieve a more accessible regulatory regime for innovative financial services (the Letter). These initiatives were first announced in June 2016 by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (Autoriteit Financiële Markten, the AFM) and the Dutch Central Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank, DNB) when the AFM and DNB published a discussion paper and invited market parties to respond to proposals for a more accessible regulatory regime for innovative financial services.
The Letter sets out the progress of some of these initiatives and discusses the results of the consultation of the discussion paper. These initiatives include the:
- introduction of a ‘regulatory sanbox’. A regulatory sanbox allows the financial supervisory authorities to accommodate innovative initiatives as much as possible;
- possibility for the AFM/DNB to provide for a partial authorisation; and
- possibility for the AFM/DNB to customize a licence by attaching conditions to it.
View the paper by the AFM and DNB (Dutch only), December 2016.
View the Minister’s letter (Dutch only), 21 December 2016.
