The United Kingdom (UK) has one of the largest financial services sectors in the world, and strong consumer protection regulation. Yet, despite nearly 2 decades of financial inclusion policymaking, persistent problems remain. Many individuals, often the most vulnerable, are unable to get...

The regulatory sandbox is a real world alternative to regulatory lag. Its emergence as a novel regulatory development responds to challenges faced by FinTech innovators in navigating an unwieldy regulatory landscape not designed with FinTech in mind. Regulatory sandboxes are in operation in...

Financial inclusion is receiving increasing attention for its potential to contribute to economic and financial development while fostering more inclusive growth and greater income equality. Although substantial progress has been made, there is still much to achieve. East Asia, the Pacific, and...

The recent financial crisis has shown that financial innovation can have devastating systemic impacts. International standard setters'' and national regulators'' response has been a global concerted effort to overhaul and tighten financial regulations. However, at a time of designing stricter...

Recently, “Financial Technology-companies” (FinTechs) are increasingly changing the financial services industry worldwide and impose considerable challenges for regulators tasked to solve the arising trade-off between sound regulation and innovation support. In this regard, regulatory...

The article begins by addressing central definitional and taxonomical issues for crowdlending (also known as peer-to-peer lending) as an evolving species of debt-based crowdfunding within the FinTech industry. It considers the regulatory tension between facilitating growth of the crowdlending...

With transformative evolution involving crypto-assets, machine learning applications and data-driven finance models, complex regulatory and policy issues are emerging. Inadequate frameworks in FinTech markets create regulatory friction and regulatory fragmentation. These limitations continue to...

In a setting where private information goes public for the first time, we study the real effects of the Basel II Accord requiring banks to calculate operational risk capital, and disclose qualitative and quantitative information. Using a difference-in-differences setup featuring partial US...

The analysis highlights the aspects of diversified market structures and of local, low-distance banking as advantageous for financial stability. Heterogeneity protects from uniform market behaviour. Local banking can better overcome the problem of asymmetric information, particular in SME...