Fintech

Drawing on their practical industry experience and fintech law expertise, our fintech lawyers help clients build, grow and protect their businesses and support established institutions transform.

Overview

The fintech sector is hugely diverse. At the nexus of financial, wealth management, banking, insurance, pension and e-commerce services and enabled by advances in data use, technology innovation and digital delivery, the sector is truly transformative.

The way in which businesses – large and small, old and new – solve problems and build financial products for customers are changing. Also changing are the ways in which customers engage with and use financial products and services.

The evolution of financial regulatory systems and data compliance standards globally, alongside the adoption of new technologies and business models, will certainly continue.

In this context, businesses need fintech lawyers who:

are experienced in the requirements and dynamics of fintechs and fintech law.
work hard to achieve their commercial ambitions.
provide a calm guiding hand when things do not go to plan.

Our team are adept at managing these risks and finding opportunities.

We are ranked band 1 (national leaders) in Chambers & Partners’ independent legal directory based on its London, UK-wide and international fintech activity. Our team was also named as the Best FinTech Sector Law Firm 2023 – UK at the FinTech Awards 2023.

Areas of focus

We have deep sector experience and can draw on cross-functional specialisms to support clients across the full range of their fintech law needs:

Technology and data – supporting businesses:

safely develop, use, protect and exploit existing and next generation technologies
utilise data – often in novel ways

Financial regulation – helping businesses effectively:

navigate legal, regulatory and compliance requirements – including advice on how these requirements apply in practice from start-up through to established businesses
engage with regulators and governmental authorities

Business growth and funding – advising businesses as they:

develop their customer experience and product offering
enter into commercial collaborations and partnerships – such as partnerships between larger banking/financial institutions on one hand and fintechs, regtechs and insurtechs on the other
expand internationally (into or from the UK)
make investment decisions, including corporate acquisitions and disposals
procure debt and equity funding
develop intellectual property

Business protection – helping businesses:

manage their regulatory and operational risks
work through regulatory reviews, regulatory investigations and commercial disputes
achieve data privacy compliance and their cybersecurity objectives

Business operations: supporting businesses and those who work in them, including by providing advice on employment and the right to work, staff incentive schemes, place of work requirements (such as leases and health & safety), commercial arrangements of all types and taxation

Experience

Advised numerous fintechs in the consumer credit and e-money segments on technology development, data privacy compliance, brand and IP protection and regulatory issues.

Collaborated with R3CEV (leading a global consortium of financial institutions) on the development of smart contract templates using blockchain technology.

Engaged with the FCA and Bank of England on their exploration of model driven machine executable regulatory reporting. This is an important technological and regulatory development in the marketplace with potential cost and efficiency savings for all regulated persons who are required to file regulatory reports.

Advising an early innovator on its commercial technology operations utilising Open Banking. (Open Banking is driven by the Payments Services Directive II and the CMA's requirement for the big banks to open up their transaction data to licensed aggregators and solution providers).

Advised crowdfunders and peer to peer lending platforms on regulatory matters and customer-facing arrangements.

Advising a fully-backed non-EU digital banking start-up on the UK regulatory authorisation applications from initial e-money authorisation to full banking license under the mobilisation route and assisting with its platform and commercial agreements.

Advising First Group on the regulatory aspects of its commercial arrangements for the provision of payment services to its customers by third party payment services providers.

Advising Nationwide on the provision of merchant acquirer and credit card payment processing services by TSYS.

Participated in VENTURER, an Innovate UK-funded research project investigating the public acceptance of driverless cars and two other driverless cars projects. We were involved in supporting AXA in the development of a legal and insurance liability regime for connected and autonomous vehicles. This is an important matter as we are involved in establishing the legislative framework that will enable progress in proliferation of driverless cars. It also supports the wider engagement by the team in innovation of financial services to support other sectors, such as smart infrastructure and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Represented the Faster Payments Scheme (the central infrastructure operator for internet and telephone banking) to set up the Mule Insights Tactical Solution (MITS): an AI enabled platform for participating financial institutions to trace fraud through the Faster Payment System using data analytics and artificial intelligence software. This is an important interim tactical solution driven by the Joint Fraud Task Force set up by the Home Secretary to counter, amongst other things, authorised push payment fraud and the increasing phenomena of ‘money mules’ where individuals permit their bank accounts to be used to transfer proceeds of crime.

Advising a leading financial services company in relation to various commercial agreements with bank sponsors, card providers and payment schemes and on regulatory compliance in respect of payment services and e-money.

Advising Honda Finance Europe on the selection and implementation of a new technology system utilising a French prime integrator and supporting over £400 million of annual finance transactions across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

Meet the team