Fintech
Overview
Financial services regulation rewards preparation. Most of the work that decides an application happens long before it is ever filed.
We advise payment institutions, electronic money institutions and crypto-asset service providers on authorisation and on the obligations that follow it: the structure of the business, the composition of its governing body, safeguarding, own funds and ongoing reporting.
Which permission a business actually needs is often the first question, and rarely the obvious one. From there the work is practical: governance and control arrangements that match the activity, and a file that sets out, in the firm's own documents, who controls the business, where client money sits and who answers for it.
What we advise on
Preparing and filing authorisation applications for payment institutions and electronic money institutions, including the business plan, the governance description, and the safeguarding and own funds arrangements that accompany them.
Authorisation of crypto-asset service providers under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, including firms moving across from the national registration regimes that applied before it, and the documentation that transition calls for.
Structuring safeguarding arrangements for client funds, documenting how they are reconciled, and advising on own funds and the other prudential conditions attached to a licence once it is held.
Contracts and control arrangements for outsourced functions, agents and distributors, including the oversight and reporting a firm keeps in place when part of its activity is carried out by someone else.
Qualifying holding notifications, changes of control, variations of permission and the ordinary supervisory correspondence that follows an authorisation once the business begins to change.
Board and management composition, fitness and propriety, the three lines of defence, and the reporting lines that let an internal control framework be evidenced rather than only described.
Regulatory context
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Payment institution
A legal person authorised in its home Member State to provide the payment services that its own authorisation covers. The authorisation is valid across the Union, with cross-border activity exercised through the freedom of establishment or the freedom to provide services.
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Electronic money institution
A legal person authorised to issue electronic money: stored monetary value, issued on receipt of funds, which is accepted as payment by someone other than the issuer.
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Crypto-asset service provider
An undertaking whose business is providing crypto-asset services to clients on a professional basis, and which is authorised to do so under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation.
Discuss your matter with our team.
Tell us what you are planning and we will set out what an application is likely to involve.