The role of managing the development of fintech in any market typically falls to the government and financial regulators, who have played either a supporting or inhibiting role for new entrants. As fintech continues to develop across the world, countries have been forced to embrace new financial technologies in order to remain competitive.
In Asia-Pacific (APAC), many governments and regulators have made the development of fintech an explicit policy objective in recent years. Driven by a desire to increase financial inclusion for significantly “unbanked” or “underbanked” populations, governments have successfully accelerated the growth of fintech financing in the region. However, this rapid growth of the fintech sector has the potential to expose systemic risks for the banking sector and the broader economy. Besides being the main enablers of accelerating access to financial services, policy-makers, governments, and regulators are often tasked with the challenge of facilitating and ensuring fintech develops in a way that minimizes the risks to the financial system and society as a whole.
