The Fintech Entrepreneur’s Guide to Regulation and Regulatory Strategy

Fintech has been growing dramatically over the last few years, and it is now an important sector in its own right. This means that Fintech companies, who could so far often rely on a comparatively lenient regulatory regime, will now have to give serious thoughts on compliance with applicable regulatory rules. 

Operating in a highly regulated environment is tedious, but not all bad—companies that can play the regulatory game well have a strategic advantage, especially with regard to time-to-market and scaling. Nothing spells missed opportunity like a competitor building market share with a copycat product whilst you are still waiting for your license!

Written for professionals, this book helps anyone whose job has to do with formulating or executing a Fintech startup strategy or whose job touches financial services regulation, or anyone who simply wants an easy- to-read introduction to financial services and their regulation.   

• Describes the purpose of and principle behind modern financial services regulation
• Explains how to include regulation into a startup’s strategic planning to optimize time-to-market and scaling
• Gives an overview of the entire financial services space, and which regulations apply where
• Gives detailed references to 20 key regulations in the EU regulatory system, including PSD, GDPR, CRD, AMLD, MiFID, UCITSD, AIFMD

The first part introduces financial services regulation, its purpose, how it is created (especially in the EU and in the US), and it develops a framework for including regulations into the strategic planning of a company. It also gives a rundown of the current financial services space—players and products—and its key regulations. The second part describes a regulatory system in more detail. The system chosen is the EU because it is more consistent and unified than the US system where a lot of the regulation still is created at the state-level. However, as most financial regulation nowadays is determined at the global level, the principles found in EU regulation will be by and large also be found the US and other systems.

STEFAN LOESCH is an experienced financial services executive, tech entrepreneur, and author. He is currently working on a number of ventures that use crypto and blockchain technology within the framework of traditional finance and regulation. His past ventures include an early stage peer-to-peer lending start-up and an edtech start-up. He is co-editor and one of the authors of PRMIA's Professional Risk Managers Handbook.

In the past, he was an Executive Director at J.P. Morgan, and a consultant in McKinsey's Corporate Finance practice. He holds a degree in Physics from the University of Bonn and an MBA from INSEAD.