Аccording to a survey made by Silicon Valley Bank, fintech startups and investors state that regulatory hurdles may cause the biggest issue in the future.
The survey conducted by Silicon Valley Bank reads that fintech firms worry about regulatory problems, which may slow down innovation in the coming year.
“The attendees at the Fintech Mashup event validated what fintech companies around the world have been voicing in recent years – an effective regulatory and compliance strategy is critical to their ultimate success,” said Bruce Wallace, Chief Digital Officer of SVB Financial Group. “As innovators continue to redefine innovative operating models across the financial services sector, it is important to us to help our clients navigate challenges as they identify opportunities to improve financial services for consumers and businesses.”
So far, 101 respondents took part in the SVB’s survey conducted at Silicon Valley Bank’s Fintech Mashup on November 3 in New York. About 43 percent said that regulatory amendments were the most difficult to deal with. As many as 24 percent stated that the problems are caused by the fact that firms don’t want to adopt new technologies. And finally,18 percent said that the biggest issue for the fintech industry was seen to be changing consumer behavior when about 15 percent worried about access to funding. However, about 17% of those asked by SVB think that the fintech sector is overfunded.
Alena Vranova, Co-Founder and CEO at SatoshiLabs, commented:
“I believe regulation [of Bitcoin as money and technology] is not only unnecessary but may be harmful. A central legislatory authority can never estimate well the evolution of such a new phenomena. The only positive influence I can imagine from the state is to say. We believe this needs support and the banks shall stop flagging bitcoin businesses and stop preventing them normal interaction with the banking system.”
As for the markets, 36 percent said that the US has the greatest potential for fintech growth, 22 percent mentioned Asia. Just 14 percent noted Europe, despite the fact that the UK is striving to make London the world centre of the fintech industry.
Plus, according to the survey, 24 percent of those asked expressed their interest in disrupting traditional financial services. Moreover, 46 percent said that the technology behind Bitcoin – blockchain – “is a technology looking for a problem to solve” when 54 percent agreed that the blockchain “is providing a solution for financial institutions”.
Jamie Burke, Founding Partner of OutlierVentures.io, said that “as someone actively investing in blockchain based fintech the two greatest risks we personally see are the UK government’s position on encryption and our own business banking partners catch-all assessment of us a company that is ‘in some way involved in the world of crypto’.”
“With regards to the UK government’s policy towards encryption, a fundamental cornerstone of blockchain systems, they risk throwing away being not just Europe’s, but the world’s centre of blockchain innovation,” he added.
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