FinTech Committee: Digitizing Finance in a Sandbox

The decree governing the operations and powers of the FinTech Committee, as the control room set up at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and the conditions and methods for carrying out the experimentation in Italy of techno- finance (FinTech). This is an innovative initiative that represents an important step forward for the digitization of the country. For the first time, in fact, Italy is equipping itself with a regulatory sandbox, a protected space dedicated to digital experimentation in the banking, financial and insurance sectors. The joint note reads: “The experimentation will allow FinTech operators to test innovative solutions, being able to benefit from a simplified transitional regime and in constant dialogue with the supervisory authorities: Bank of Italy, Consob, Ivass. At the same time, the authorities responsible for regulation will be able to observe the dynamics of technological development and identify the most appropriate and effective regulatory interventions to facilitate the development of FinTech, containing already at the start the spread of potential risks “. operators “will have to submit to the supervisory authority responsible for the matter projects relating to innovative services, products or processes in the banking, financial or insurance sector and which bring benefits to end users or contribute to market efficiency. The projects must be in a sufficiently advanced state for experimentation and sustainable from an economic and financial point of view. The supervisory authorities will provide indications aimed at specifying the criteria for admission to the trial established by the decree. As regards the moment for submitting applications for access to the trial in 2021, the supervisory authorities, by September, will determine the time window for sending requests for admission to the sandbox. A contact point is also available on the website of each authority for initiating informal discussions with operators. Once the preliminary phase of the applications has been completed, the official register of operators admitted to the trial will be published on the website of the Treasury Department “. The project is part of” a framework of constant dialogue between institutions and operators in the sector, facilitated by the work of the Coordination Committee for FinTech, established in 2018 at the Treasury Department and formalized with the Growth Decree as an institutional space for discussion, coordination, proposal and sharing of experiences and best practices between the authorities and competent institutions in the FinTech field “.