Eversheds Sutherland Wierzbowski is advising the Polish Ministry of Finance and Polish Financial Supervision Authority on a project titled "On the Road to Financial Inclusion and Innovation," which is designed to establish a legal and technological framework for developing the FinTech and SupTech sector in Poland. The project also involves, among others, the EBRD.
According to Eversheds Sutherland Wierzbowski, “the general aim of the project will be to create both legal and technology framework for accelerating FinTech development in Poland and to assist the Ministry of Finance and the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, respectively, in developing innovative technological solutions within the Polish financial market, identifying and removing legal, regulatory, and supervisory constraints limiting technology advancement. It will also focus on providing recommendations on using innovative technology by the PFSA to support supervision competences over some market areas."
The project will consider the spectrum of disruptive technologies, with special consideration of Distributed Ledger Technology, machine learning, advanced data analytics, and cloud computing. The project is financed by the Directorate-General for Structural Reform Support of the European Commission, and the Project Manager for the consortium is Mariusz Wieckowski, Managing Partner of Areto.”
According to Eversheds Sutherland Wierzbowski, the initiative is divided into three separate parts. Part one will “focus solely on the FinTech sector, is aimed at providing the Ministry of Finance with recommendations for the development of the financial technology sector in Poland." The second part will focus on designing the concept and framework of a regulatory sandbox for the PFSA. “The final part will consider recommendations for the PFSA on the application of new technologies in supervisory processes. Supervisory technology (SupTech) is the use of innovative technology by supervisory authorities to digitize and automate a certain set of supervision processes.”
“We are honored that we can work with the EBRD, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, and the Ministry of Finance on the project involving development of a road map to eliminating barriers to the growth of the FinTech sector in Poland, supporting PFSA in preparing and implementing a regulatory sandbox, and advising on identifying supervisory technologies that could be implemented in Poland,” commented Eversheds Sutherland Wierzbowski Counsel Michal Markowski, who is leading the firm's team on the project. “The project is aimed at facilitating transformational changes on the financial market and creating stronger foundations for the growth of innovation in Poland. In this sense it is a venture with strategic importance for the growth of the Polish financial services market, and realization of the project will contribute to increasing the country’s attractiveness for foreign investors. Together with colleagues from other offices of Eversheds Sutherland, we will conduct an analysis for PFSA of the options for implementing a regulatory sandbox in Poland, based on experiences in other jurisdictions, and provide support for PFSA in developing the final model for this solution."
