Evolutionary Approaches and the Construction of Technology-Driven Regulations

Innovation technologies have substantially changed commerce and society. A new financial industry in the form of financial technology (fintech) initiated the era of the digital economy. At the same time, inherent risks in technology-driven financial innovations, such as technical risks, information asymmetry, and even potential systemic risks, necessitate regulatory responses. However, insufficient regulatory techniques, outdated financial laws, and conservative regulatory concepts make it difficult for traditional regulations based on financial intermediaries to adapt to the current environment of decentralized financial transactions. Technology-driven regulations focused on data monitoring could be a remedy for the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of traditional financial regulations and enhance effective protection of financial consumers’ rights and interests. This new regulatory model aims to build a system that integrates equal access to information on blockchain transactions by both parties to it (i.e., the regulators and the financial institutions they regulate) for the purpose of oversight, intelligent real-time oversight, and an experimental sandbox for developing regulatory technology. This dynamic and flexible financial regulatory system could effectively address fintech risks.     

The future of fintech

This article describes the growing field of financial technology (fintech) and the different financial paradigms and technologies that support it. Fintech is primarily a disintermediation force where disruptive technologies are the drivers. This framework discusses 10 primary areas in fintech comprising a taxonomy, which categorizes research in the field and also proposes a pedagogical structure. Pitfalls of fintech are also analyzed. Overall, the great strides made in computing technology, mathematics, statistics, psychology, econometrics, linguistics, cryptography, big data, and computer interfaces have combined to create an explosion of fintechs.