Government Message to The Banks: Stop Bleating and start engaging with FinTechs

By Glen Frost, Founder of the FinTech Summit & FinTech Awards

Make no mistake, this is the year of FinTech.

I had to pinch myself – is this the most tech friendly Australian Government ever?

“The Fintech and Regtech sectors are critical to the future of our jobs and lifestyles,” said Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg last week.

Hot on the heels of the Royal Commission into Financial Services, legislation authorising Equity Crowdfunding, legislation authorising Open Banking (Consumer Data Rights), we now have a Senate inquiry into the opportunities, effectiveness and competitiveness of the fintech sector; formerly called the Senate Select Committee Inquiry into Financial and Regulatory Technologies.

This level of Government support for the fintech sector is unprecedented; it is undoubtably a message to investors that the Government wants to see the fintech sector growing, and a warning to those in the banking sector who haven’t changed their bad habits (and/or unlawful behaviour and actions, unlawful products etc); the Government is fed up with your behaviour and now has found a way to inject real competition into the banking sector – supporting the fintech sector.

Senator Bragg said the inquiry would be a perfect opportunity to bolster national competitiveness in technology, and in a hat tip to the Open Banking legislation, added; “It’s also essential we start finding ways to widen the use of the consumer data right recently established by the government.”

In a clear message to the bankers, Senator Bragg said the inquiry will also “map and summarise barriers to the uptake of new technologies, catalogue the progress of Fintech facilitation reform, present benchmarking of comparable global regimes, assess current Regtech practices and consider opportunities for Regtech to lower compliance costs while strengthening compliance.”

In plain English, this is the Government saying to the banks; stop bleating about the cost of regulation, and start engaging with the Fintech RegTech sector – whatever your banking problem, there is a technology solution – you just need to engage and invest in the fintech sector to understand what is possible, and then implement it. Quite rightly, the Government has lost patience with the big banks and their excuses.

It’s time for change, and fintech is the solution.

Glen Frost is the Founder of The FinTech Summit, an annual event for the leaders in the fintech sector – www.fintechsummit.com.au