The European Commission launched a public consultation to gather views from stakeholders on its new digital finance strategy for Europe, a follow-up to its 2018 FinTech action plan. Building on the Commission’s existing work on digital finance, the new strategy will be a step towards ensuring that consumers and industry can benefit from digitalisation while, at the same, mitigating potential risks associated with digital finance. The Commission highlights that the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the importance of innovations in digital financial products and services, noting citizens’ reliance on remote services, and it expects digitalisation of the financial sector to accelerate as a consequence of the pandemic.
Concretely, the new strategy will pinpoint public policy priorities for the upcoming five years and will outline policy measures per priority. In line with market developments and in coordination with other work done by the Commission, it may add further measures. Four priority areas have so far been identified:
- • ensuring that the EU financial services regulatory framework is fit for the digital age
- • enabling consumers and firms to reap the opportunities offered by the EU-wide single market for digital financial services
- • promoting a data-driven financial sector for the benefit of EU consumers and firms
- • enhancing the digital operational resilience of the EU financial system.
The consultation covers three main areas: ensuring that the financial services regulatory framework is technology neutral and innovation-friendly; removing fragmentation and addressing regulatory obstacles; and promoting a well-regulated data-driven financial sector. As expected, it addresses topics such as the use of AI in financial services, open finance, RegTech and regulatory sandboxes.
Next steps
- • The consultation is open until 26 June 2020 and the Commission will propose its new Digital Finance Strategy in Q3 of 2020.
- • The secretariat will further analyse the content and follow up with the relevant working groups on developing a response.