Regulatory Sandboxes Boost Fintech Investment by 30%
The Financial Supervisory Service said in its recent report that investment in fintech firms showed an increase of 30.4 percent in seven out of eight countries where regulatory sandboxes are currently in effect for more than one year.
A regulatory sandbox can be defined as temporary deregulation for testing innovative services. In South Korea, it was adopted in April this year with the implementation of the Special Act on Financial Innovation Support.
The eight countries mentioned in the report are Britain, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, India, Canada, Malaysia and Japan. Each of the countries introduced regulatory sandboxes in July 2017 or earlier. The only exception is Australia.
The sandboxes boosted the investment by 84 percent in Japan, 83 percent in Singapore, 60 percent in Hong Kong, 35 percent in Canada, 32 percent in India, 13 percent in Britain, and 5 percent in Malaysia. The total fintech venture investment in the eight countries increased from US$4,701.9 million to US$6,131.7 million through sandbox introduction.
The average fintech venture investment increased through the introduction in all of those countries. Specifically, their rates of increase range from 25 percent to 216 percent and their average rate of increase is 86 percent.