Overview
Technology has always been a transformative force in the financial services industry, with revolutionary innovations in securities investing and trading, transaction payment methodologies, and the provision of investment advice. In Fintech, Regtech, and the Financial Services Industry, Editor Clifford E. Kirsch, a leading securities lawyer with more than twenty-five years of regulatory, corporate counsel, and private practice experience, and a team of thirty-nine experts examine the new developments taking place in the industry and the opportunities these developments bring to the marketplace, as well as the emerging regulatory framework.
To assist the reader in examining and understanding all the relevant fintech issues, the discussion in Fintech, Regtech, and the Financial Services Industry is divided into seven parts. Part I provides introductory discussions tracing the development of fintech, regtech, and suptech, as well as a review of the regulatory agencies that cover financial products and services that fall under the fintech umbrella. Part II examines the business applications of fintech and their attendant regulatory implications, including the use of digital technology by financial services firms to interact with customers; raising equity capital through the SEC’s Regulation Crowdfunding; digital advisers; model risk management; money transmission laws at the federal and state level as applied to fintechs; and fintech platforms that bring investors and issuers of securities together using a website or app. Part III covers the concept of creating a general ledger through blockchains, which can be relied upon by the public as a source of information of ownership. Part IV examines the issues that arise when considering the handling and use of data by fintechs. Part V considers anti-money laundering in the fintech context. Part VI provides a discussion of the legal effectiveness of electronic signatures, electronic records, electronic delivery (“e-delivery”) of records, and electronic retention of records, as well as a description and analysis of the regulatory and statutory framework that applies to e-delivery by mutual funds and their sponsors of regulatory documents to customers and investors. Finally, Part VII discusses firms’ integration of data analytics into their compliance programs, as well as regulators’ use of data analytics to surveil financial markets for potential misconduct, pursue investigations where further inquiry is merited, and prove rule violations in the court of law.