IOSCO Research Report on Financial Technologies (Fintech)

This report illustrates that Fintech is truly at the intersection of finance and technology. The observation of key trends - such as the greater availability of data, exponential growth in computing power allowing the analysis of ever larger data sets, broader access to and the decreasing cost of goods and services, increasing disintermediation and re-intermediation, and demographic and generational changes - all point towards a crossroads of significant technology-driven change in the offering of financial services.

The report focusses on the delivery of securities and capital markets products and services through the use of Fintech. In particular, the report examines:

• Financing Platforms, including Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending and equity crowdfunding (ECF);
• Retail Trading and Investment Platforms, including robo-advisers and social trading and investing platforms;
• Institutional Trading Platforms, with a specific focus on innovation in bond trading platforms;
• Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT), including application of the blockchain technology and shared ledgers to the securities markets.