IOSCO examined the opportunities and risks presented by financial technology ("fintech") to investors, securities markets and regulators.
The IOSCO Report on Financial Technology detailed numerous emerging financial services technologies, including financing platforms, retail trading and investment platforms, institutional platforms and distributed ledger technologies ("blockchain"). The report concluded that "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 cautioned that fintech carries certain risks, particularly those that arise from:
- unlicensed cross-border activity;
- programming errors in the algorithms that underlie automation;
- cybersecurity breaches;
- the failure of investors to understand financial products and services;
- the failure of financial firms to "know-the-client" for the purposes of anti-money laundering and fraud control; and
- the global nature of fintech, which IOSCO asserted should be addressed by global regulatory cooperation and communication.
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