FCA Pilots Digital Sandbox to Tackle COVID-19 Challenges
FCA announced its intention to pilot a digital sandbox to provide enhanced regulatory support to fintech and regtech firms tackling challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. FCA is planning the digital sandbox in collaboration with the industry and key strategic partners and is planning to open applications for the sandbox later in the Summer. Shortly, FCA plans to publish specific proposals for launching a coronavirus pilot of the digital sandbox and will ask industry feedback on these proposals.
The regulatory approach of FCA supports innovators and innovative firms through its Innovation Hub, Regulatory Sandbox, and TechSprint program. Prior to the pandemic, FCA had been exploring the concept of a digital sandbox. This would enhance some key features of the innovation services of FCA, allowing innovative firms to test and develop proofs of concept in a digital testing environment. There is also an important convening role for FCA to play in helping to enable greater collaboration to solve complex industry-wide problems. FCA is, therefore, accelerating its plans and will pilot aspects of the digital sandbox on a modular basis to provide support to innovative firms during the crisis. The following features could be the foundations of a digital sandbox:
- Access to high-quality data assets, including synthetic or anonymized data sets to enable testing and validation of technology solutions
- Identification of areas of regulatory interest (as with the latest sandbox cohort) where FCA would like to see innovation play a greater role or issue specific challenges
- A collaboration platform to facilitate diversity of thinking, share lessons learned, and foster an ecosystem around solving complex industry-wide challenges
- An observation deck to enable regulators and other interested parties to observe in-flight testing at a technical level, to inform policy thinking in a safeguarded environment
- Application programming interface (API) or vendor market place where fintech, regtech, and other vendors can list their solutions and APIs, to encourage greater interoperability and foster a thriving ecosystem.
- Access to regulatory support such as development of testing plans, sign posting to relevant regulations, informal steers, or support to understand the wider regulatory environment or the authorization process.
FCA will pilot these features of the digital sandbox and tools to support firms developing specific use cases and will evaluate the effectiveness of a feature or tool through this pilot.
Related Link: Update on Digital Sandbox
Keywords: Europe, UK, Banking, Insurance, Securities, Digital Sandbox, COVID-19, Regtech, Fintech, FCA
Featured Experts
Victor Calanog, Ph.D.
Leading economist; commercial real estate; performance forecasting, econometric infrastructure; data modeling; credit risk modeling; portfolio assessment; custom commercial real estate analysis; thought leader.
Related Articles
FDIC Proposes Amendments to Real Estate Lending Standards
FDIC is seeking comments on a rule to amend the interagency guidelines for real estate lending policies—also known as the Real Estate Lending Standards.
ISDA Consults on Implementation of Fallbacks for Certain Swap Rates
ISDA is consulting on the implementation of fallbacks for the sterling LIBOR ICE Swap Rate and for the USD LIBOR ICE Swap Rate.
BIS and BoE Launch Innovation Hub in London
BIS and BoE launched the BIS Innovation Hub Center in London, which is the fourth new Innovation Hub Centre to be opened in the past two years.
ESRB Recommends Reciprocation of Certain Macroprudential Measures
ESRB published recommendations on the reciprocation of macro-prudential measures in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Norway, and Sweden.
US Agencies Set Out Unified Agenda for Planned Regulatory Actions
SEC announced that the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs released the Spring 2021 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.
EC Publishes Regulation on Key Aspects of Implementation of SA-CCR
EC published the Delegated Regulation 2021/931, which supplements the Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR or Regulation 575/2013) with regard to the regulatory technical standards specifying the method for identifying derivative transactions with one or more than one material risk driver.
BCBS Consults on Prudential Treatment of Cryptoasset Exposures
BCBS is consulting on preliminary proposals for the prudential treatment of cryptoasset exposures of banks.
EBA Revises List of Validation Rules for Reporting
EBA issued a revised list of validation rules under the implementing technical standards on supervisory reporting.
Banking Authorities and Private Sector Collaborate on Wholesale CBDC
BIS Innovation Hub, BDF, and SNB announced that, together with a private-sector consortium led by Accenture, they will conduct an experiment using wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) for cross-border settlement.
ESAs Publish Amended Implementing Standards on Mapping of ECAIs
ESAs published two amended implementing technical standards on the mapping of credit assessments of External Credit Assessment Institutions (ECAIs).
