World Economic Forum and Georgetown Center for Financial Markets and Policy Release Global FinTech Report

In August, the Georgetown Center for Financial Markets and Policy and the World Economic Forum released a white paper on the regulatory frameworks of marketplace lenders, “The Complex Regulatory Landscape for FinTech: An Uncertain Future for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise Lending.”

Reena Aggarwal, director of the center, Robert E. McDonough Professor of Business Administration, professor of finance at Georgetown McDonough, and vice provost for faculty, led the project. The research team was led by Jonah Trout (MBA ’16), who co-authored the paper with Christopher Copenhaver (MBA ’16), Hilary Halpern (MBA ’17), Shuang Hao (MBA ’16), and Vincent Tran (MBA ’16). The Georgetown research team shared their findings at a roundtable discussion in April.

In a blog post announcing the report, Halpern and co-authors from the World Economic Forum list the actions regulators should take to catch up with FinTech innovators, including requiring stronger controls on consumer data, providing incentives, and establishing a single licensing agency:

As regulators are becoming aware of the need for appropriate and coordinated regulatory reforms, where should they start? At the World Economic Forum, we sat down with startups, regulators, banks, and insurers to discuss this. The result is 12 things regulators could do to catch up with FinTech innovations, taking into account the various stakeholders.

“At Georgetown, we want to help provide innovative solutions to complex issues that impact the global society,” Aggarwal said. “This work by the Center for Financial Markets and Policy, the World Economic Forum, and our students achieves that mission. The report also gave our students a unique opportunity to work with senior policymakers and executives from all over the world.”

To learn more about the report, visit https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/the-12-things-regulators-could-do-to-catch-up-with-fintech-innovations.