Interest and activity in financial technology or FinTech has grown dramatically over the last few years, and our lawyers are well-positioned to offer clients the benefit of our extensive global tech experience, combined with regulatory and financial services knowledge.
There are a number of key drivers for increased activity in the FinTech sector, including recognition of technology’s potential to have a transformative and disruptive effect on financial services through the development and deployment of blockchain, distributed ledger and smart contracts technology and the use of artificial intelligence and data analytics to allow risk to be priced more effectively.
However, with opportunity and change come risk and the need to understand the legal, regulatory and compliance landscape within which the technology operates. Regulators and law-makers recognize the potential of these innovations and are actively responding to changes in the sector. Companies looking to utilize these technical innovations need to be alive to the complex and rapidly changing legal and regulatory landscape.
We are at the forefront of legal thought leadership in this sector, and our FinTech law practice offers a combination of deep global tech experience with regulatory and financial services knowledge. Our recent experience includes advising some of the world’s leading financial institutions on legal and regulatory issues relating to potential use cases of FinTech, acting as legal counsel to financial services consortia assessing the opportunities and impact of the technology and advising technology companies, start-ups and investors across the sector.
China continues to play a leading role in technology development, including financial technology. Mobile payments and the development of related applications is on the rise. Because of this, FinTech remains one of our core focus areas. Our China FinTech team is backed by our global FinTech practice comprising over 250 lawyers. Specifically, we have deep experience advising on the regulation of FinTech, cryptocurrencies and other digital tokens (including CBDCs), digital asset exchanges, digitization of traditional financial services and wider blockchain projects, as well as payments-related matters.
We lead the market in FinTech regulatory matters and integrate lawyers from other practices to advise on corporate transactions, financial products and tech-driven aspects of FinTech matters. Our dedicated focus and multi-disciplinary approach is a key differentiator that sets us apart from our competition.
