On 19 April 2021, the Bank of England (BoE) and HM Treasury (HMT) released a statement announcing the joint creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Taskforce. The Chancellor has also announced ambitious and complementary plans to encourage growth of UK fintechs and “cement the UK’s position as the world’s pre-eminent financial centre.” These … Read more

On 26 February 2021, HM Treasury (HMT) published Ron Kalifa OBE’s independent strategic review of UK financial technology (FinTech), also known as the Kalifa Review. The executive summary is available here. Formally relaunched on 20 July 2020 following an announcement by HMT as part of its 2020 Budget and delays due to Covid-19 (see our … Read more

On 5 February 2021, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a report titled ‘Implementing Technology Change’, which sets out findings from its review into how financial services firms manage technology change, the impact of change failures, and industry practices to help reduce the impact of incidents resulting from change management. The FCA analysed over one … Read more

Following consultation in the second half of 2018, the European Banking Authority (EBA) has published its final report on draft guidelines for outsourcing arrangements. The report contains both the guidelines at pages 17-55 and the EBA’s feedback on the public consultation at pages 68-125. Most provisions of the guidelines will enter into force on September … Read more

Following consultation in the second half of 2018, the European Banking Authority (“EBA“) published its Final Report on Draft Guidelines on Outsourcing Arrangements (the “Guidelines“) on 25 February 2019. Most provisions of the Guidelines will enter into force on 30 September 2019. At the same time, the Guidelines will replace those issued by the EBA’s … Read more

  2018 was a landmark year for digital TMT and sourcing. Against the backdrop of the UK’s impending departure from the EU, there were a wealth of highlights as regulation moved further towards greater harmonisation at the European level; the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR“) came into effect on 25 May 2018 and implemented … Read more

If the level of capital flowing into the financial technology sector is any indication, the growth in number and size of financial technology start-ups cannot be denied. According to a report by KPMG, global investment in fintech companies reached US $57.9 billion by mid-year of 2018, already exceeding the total investment figures of 2017. Click … Read more

The Mirai malware gained its infamy in October 2016 following its record breaking attack on systems operated by domain name system provider Dyn, using unsecured Internet of Things (“IoT“) enabled “smart” devices (such as CCTV recorders, webcams and routers). It resulted in the widely reported outage of Twitter, Netflix, Spotify and Airbnb, amongst others. Mirai … Read more