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Regulatory sandbox as the way to build a strong fintech sector in Poland

Monday,

Regulatory sandbox as the way to build a strong fintech sector in Poland

On September 24th representatives of entities operating on the financial market in Poland met in the building of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority. The roundtable, at the invitation of KNF, the Fintech Poland Foundation and Impact CEE, guests representatives of public administration, banking sector and entities operating in the fintech industry, including the CEO of Igoria Trade S.A. Mr Wojciech Kuliński. The topic of the debate was “The roles of the state and market participants in building a strong sector of financial innovation in Poland”.

  

The Polish financial innovation sector has great potential and can significantly contribute to the development of not only the national economy, but the entire region. Poland is a leader in modern banking and can play a key role in building a strong financial innovation sector in this part of Europe, creating competition for western markets. During the discussion, the director of the Fintech Department of the UKNF – Artur Granicki presented the steps to be taken in the coming weeks. The first is the creation of a “virtual sandbox” – a project testing potential service providers. According to plans, in November this year, the KNF will present recruitment rules and select sandbox operators who will be responsible for selecting the most valuable entities from the fintech industry and researching their solutions. As part of the virtual sandbox, clients of fintech entities will be given the opportunity to invest virtual funds, or to entrust them for testing. Assuming a positive transition of the experiment, the invested funds will be returned to the clients as a gratification for participating in the tests. The next step is to introduce a real “regulatory sandbox” in which the participants will risk real funds.

The project of the Polish regulatory sandbox is modeled on the experiences of the markets of Western Europe and Asia. – We learn from other people’s mistakes. We know what challenges the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore faced. We know what has failed and drawn conclusions – said KNF chairman Marek Chrzanowski. Thanks to the cooperation established with the Monetary Authority of Singapore during last year Impact fintech’17, the Polish superintendent exchanges trainees and fintech companies from Poland with Asian markets. The discussion participants positively received the KNF’s plans. Katarzyna Sosin representing Billon Financial believes that the virtual sandbox will reach a wide range of start-ups. Piotr Marciniak – Managing Director of the BGŻ PNB Paribas Internet Banking Division stresses that this project should use local potential, but also create attractive solutions for external markets.

  

An interesting substantive input into the debate was also made by the Ministry of Digitization, noticing that digital identity is the basis for all digital activities also for fintech. For this reason, the ministry is working on a “digital administrative sandbox”. The goal is to increase the availability and maturity of digital services. – Poland is an exceptional country where public administration works closely with banks’ transaction services. We hope that telecoms, e-commerce and other partners will soon join the cooperation – added Magdalena Borowik, Advisor to the Minister for financial and transaction technologies in the Ministry of Digital Affairs.

The discussion in the “Round Table” format, dedicated to the future of the Polish financial innovation sector, was an introduction to broader considerations about the future of the fintech industry in Poland and in the world. Continuation of this type of meetings, but also other proposals for the development of the industry will be this year’s Impact fintech’18 congress, held on November 28 and 29 in Lodz, which Igoria Trade S.A. is a partner and sponsor.