Borenius Financial Institutions & Regulation – Industry Review – October 2018 Fintech Update

We established a new Financial Institutions & Regulation team earlier this year in order to answer our clients’ growing need for expertise in the field of financial regulation. Our recent strategic recruitments, including Counsel Ari Syrjäläinen and Counsel Jorma Yli-Jaakkola, are great examples of our efforts to respond to increased demand in the field and to leverage our pre-existing practice areas’ expertise for the benefit of our Fintech clients.

Both Messrs. Syrjäläinen and Yli-Jaakkola have extensive past expertise in the field as heads of legal units in major financial institutions. While Mr. Yli-Jaakkola advises issuers on legal and regulatory matters and prepares financial markets initiatives and development projects both domestically and cross borderly, Mr. Syrjäläinen advises our clients on capital markets transactions and financial markets regulation in a cross-border environment. In addition, Mr. Yli-Jaakkola has in-depth understanding of post-trade industry and its regulation. He has carried out several Fintech projects in his previous positions and continues to focus on these matters here at Borenius.

Borenius actively involved in the Fintech industry

Borenius is one of the founding members of Fintech Finland, an association founded to boost Fintech services in Finland and to help Fintech companies grow internationally. This primarily involves supporting foreign Fintech companies while they are expanding their services to Finland, but we are increasingly gaining traction in selected areas by supporting domestic Fintech companies also in their EU regulatory matters outside Finland. In addition, we are actively developing thought leadership within the Fintech industry. This means that we are regularly involved in discussions with the relevant ministries and regulators on the market’s needs to amend existing legislation or to influence regulators’ approach.

We are also actively engaged in select market level initiatives, such as the Real-Time Economy programme and MyData initiatives, which have been initiated locally but have a broader ambition, linking to EU level initiatives and objectives.

Finnish Fintech companies to London in October – seminar and networking

As part of our efforts to support Fintech Finland, we are organising an event for Finnish Fintech companies in London next week. The event encompasses e.g. networking with potential London-based investors and partners followed by a seminar day with relevant stakeholders that support the expansion of Fintech business to the UK.

Furthermore, we provide access to our global network to Finnish Fintech companies to help them build relationships with other Fintech companies. For example, a London based Fintech ‘unicorn’, Transferwise, will share their experiences developing from a start-up into a unicorn at our event in London while a British global investment bank and financial services company discusses the creation of the new generation of Fintech companies. In October, we will also host an event in Helsinki organised by MasterCard and NFT Ventures for their Lighthouse Development Program, where we will be providing legal and regulatory support to five Fintech finalists selected from a group of 400 applicants.

Borenius Fintech at the IBA Rome 2018

Mr. Jorma Yli-Jaakkola will be on Securities Law committee’s panel on “Titanic fail or overwhelming success: blockchain in the capital markets”. The panel is about distributed ledger technology (also referred to as blockchain technology) and its opening to a new approach to data management. The use of real-time data and data transparency could provide opportunities for the execution of ‘smart’ contracts relevant to capital markets transactions, including securities and derivative transactions. The value proposition of blockchain technology for market participants and their legal advisors is further discussed by the panel together with the relevant legal and regulatory framework applicable to ‘smart contracts’. Jorma’s legal and business experience for the past 14 years within the leading global capital markets infrastructure groups and his positions both in Nordics and UK provide him with insightful perspectives to the evolving business models that both the technology and regulatory evolution are bringing to the capital markets.