Australian and UK Govs sign up for FinTech Bridge
Australian Treasurer, Scott Morrison and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond last Friday signed the UK-Australian FinTech Bridge, in a move welcomed by fintech firms across Australia.
Through the Bridge, governments, regulators, trade promotion agencies and industry bodies from the two countries would work together to drive fintech growth.
FinTech Australia members said that it would both drive best practice innovation and industry growth and assist with expansion plans overseas.
The organisation’s chair, Stuart Stoyan, said that the UK market was critical to Australia’s fintech industry.
“Last year’s EY FinTech Australia Census found that the UK was the number one target market for future international expansion among Australian fintechs,” he said.
“As such, we welcome the fact the bridge states that Australian and UK regulators will explore opportunities to enable quicker licensing processing for inbound innovative businesses, if these businesses are already licensed in the other jurisdiction.”
Before the Bridge, regulators were largely just referring businesses to each other, which was not very quick.
Stoyan hoped that under the new agreements, Australian and the UK could have “speedy ‘straight off the satellite’ access to the latest innovative regulatory ideas, before the rest of the world.”
He said that there was strong evidence that UK-based fintech companies also wanted to expand into Australia, as it could provide a base to serve the Asia-Pacific region.
“This is a trend we would like to see continue and potentially strengthened through greater co-ordination of trade promotion via this agreement,” he said.
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