Australian, British regulators seal new agreement to extend existing cooperation on fintech

Leading members of the fintech community in Australia have said that they are now ready to expand their startups with the new UK-Australia Fintech Bridge deal. The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), have sealed a new deal to extend existing cooperation on fintech innovation.

Treasurer Scott Morrison and Philip Hammond, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, have both signed the agreement. Australia and the UK will be partnering to push fintech growth. The bridge deal outlines how industry bodies, trade promotion agencies, regulators and governments from the two countries will work together to achieve such goal.

The bridge agreement states that regulators from both Australia and UK will explore opportunities to allow faster licensing processing for inbound innovative businesses.

The ASIC confirmed on Friday through a media release that it has agreed with the FCA to explore ways to speed up the licensing process in terms of the authorisation of innovative businesses that are already authorised in the other jurisdiction. They will also carry out joint policy work, research and experimentation, co-host fintech and regtech events and explore secondment opportunities.

SIC commissioner John Price said the ASIC and the FCA have developed an immensely beneficial relationship with fintech, citing the quarterly information sharing calls. "We are delighted this extension will offer fintechs the opportunity to spread good ideas across borders. We will work together to raise topics and approaches of common interest at an international level," he added.

The EY FinTech Australia Census found last year that the UK was the top target market for future international expansion among Australian fintechs. FinTech Australia chair Stuart Stoyan said the UK market is critically important.

“This is a big potential step forward from the current arrangement, whereby the regulators are largely simply referring businesses to each other, and could help Australian businesses get far quicker access to the UK market,” Business Insider Australia reports Stoyan as saying. He added that they are specifically excited about the proposal for Australian and UK financial services regulators to partner to live-test innovative regulations across both markets.

FinTech Australia and Innovate Finance, its UK counterpart, will have the opportunity to help set the agenda for government-to-government talks under the agreement. The industry bodies will look into reciprocal membership deals. ASIC and the FCA will still refer innovative fintech businesses to each other. The Australian and UK governments have established a UK-Australia Fintech Bridge for an improved cooperation.