The European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs, i.e. EBA, EIOPA and ESMA) have published the attached Report – FinTech: Regulatory sandboxes and innovation hubs, JC 2018 74 of 7 January 2019 under Article 9(4) of each ESA Regulation and following the Commission’s March 2018 FinTech Action Plan that mandates the ESAs to carry out an analysis of innovation facilitators and to identify best practices. The report contains a comparative analysis of the innovation facilitators established to date in the EU (21 EU Member States and 3 EEA States have established innovation hubs and 5 EU Member States have regulatory sandboxes in operation), including comparison of their objectives, legal bases, phases and interaction with other competent authorities. From this analysis, the ESAs have developed a set of best practices, which are intended to promote consistency in design and operation, foster regulatory and supervisory transparency and facilitate cooperation between national authorities in relation to innovation facilitators.
The best practices are intended to:
- promote consistency across the single market in the design and operation of innovation facilitators;
- promote transparency of regulatory and supervisory policy outcomes from arising from interactions in the context of innovation facilitators; and
- facilitate cooperation between national authorities, including consumer and data protection authorities.
The report also sets out options to be considered in future EU-level work on innovation facilitators, including:
- the development of ESA own-initiative guidance on cooperation and coordination between innovation facilitators; and
- the creation of an EU network to connect innovation facilitators established at the Member State level which would support the scaling-up of FinTech across the single market.
Link to the press release: https://eba.europa.eu/-/esas-publish-joint-report-on-regulatory-sandboxes-and-innovation-hubs
