Since April of this year, the CMF has held an accelerated agenda of meetings with different representatives of key agents of the financial and securities markets, to address issues related to the legal and regulatory regulation of Fintech.
Matias Edwards Merino
In the context of such meetings, various matters have been discussed in terms of financial regulation and project presentation, especially that related to Fintech (a term that results from the contraction of two concepts: Financial Technologies), that is, the related financial industry with the implementation of digital technologies to optimize the activities of the financial industry.
Financing Technologies and their presence in Chile
In the growing world of technologies and the ways in which they relate to people, knowing the concept of Fintech becomes relevant because its presence in Chile has generated the need to propose and present a bill to provide a framework regulation of this phenomenon. Fintechs represent a financial industry in which technology is used to provide different financial and investment operations to streamline supply and demand in an efficient, convenient and reliable manner. FinteChile is, for example, a community that brings together various companies of this nature, and whose digital platform allows them to diversify according to the area of specialization: Processing of payments and remittances (eg Mercado Pago, ETpay, etc.), Technological infrastructure for finances and insurance (eg CloudLatam, FinAPI, Boufin, etc.), alternative financing and loans (eg Banca.ME, Detachame, FinFast, etc.), among others.
It is possible, then, to note that there are already several companies of this nature and, in accordance with what was proposed by the Senate Finance Commission, there is a need to review the bill currently being processed (the “Project”), precisely to determine a regulatory framework that indicates which companies fit within this type of business, how they should be carried out and how to reduce the risks associated with them.
The main axes of the Project seek to define the essential elements to identify Fintech companies, giving the CMF the power to oversee compliance with the demands and requirements to operate that said standard intends to establish. Namely and by way of example: the requirement to be registered in the Registry of Financial Services Providers, prior authorizations from the CMF for the provision of services and compliance with the information obligation that these companies are considered to have to provide to the regulator.
Notwithstanding that it is still being discussed, there is consensus on the need to regulate Fintech in order to protect the market that they make up and the people and entities that intervene in it.
As a point of reference for the Project in process and the regulations and criteria that the CMF may establish, we can consider the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (“DEPA”), an international treaty that seeks to regulate digital platforms in the economic field, which has been signed by Chile New Zealand and Singapore.
This treaty seeks to generate a friendly framework for ICT companies (Information and Communication Technologies), providing more facilities to citizens and especially to SMEs, favoring the export of products and services through the regulation of some crucial matters. , such as the free flow of data and non-discrimination of digital products, artificial intelligence, digital identity, privacy, among others.
The project that is being processed today in our country and that seeks to give this legal framework to Fintechs is currently in the second constitutional process in the Senate, and as the government has raised the need to promote productivity indexes, it is also necessary to advance in this project since it promotes the development of digital economies and better access for SMEs and other companies.