28 Amendments of Danuta Maria HÜBNER related to 2016/2243(INI)
Amendment 1 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 3 a (new)
Citation 3 a (new)
– having regard to the Occasional paper no 172 of April 2016 of the European Central Bank entitled: "Distributed ledger technologies in securities post-trading: Revolution or evolution?" 1a __________________ 1a https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpops /ecbop172.en.pdf
Amendment 3 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 5 a (new)
Citation 5 a (new)
– having regard to the paper of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures of February 2017 entitled "Distributed ledger technology in payment, clearing and settlement: An analytical framework"1a __________________ 1a http://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d157.pdf
Amendment 5 #
Motion for a resolution
Citation 16 a (new)
Citation 16 a (new)
Amendment 10 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital -A (new)
Recital -A (new)
–A. whereas financial services have always relied on technology and evolved in line with technological innovation;
Amendment 11 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A
Recital A
A. whereas FinTech should be understood as finance enabled by or provided via newinnovative technologies, affecting the whole financial sector, from banking to insurance, pension funds, investment advice and market infrastructures; whereas this term therefore includes a broad range of companies and services which differ widely from one another, pose different challenges and the regulatory treatment of which has to differ;
Amendment 16 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A a (new)
Recital A a (new)
Aa. whereas the transformative potential of Fintech on many areas of the financial sector is very significant; whereas so far only the first stages of the development of these technologies have been witnessed; whereas there are still many questions which are opened and many different scenarios which have to be considered regarding their future impact;
Amendment 18 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital A b (new)
Recital A b (new)
Ab. whereas the uncertainty about the scale and effect of the development of FinTech calls for proper and careful monitoring of the relevant developments in the FinTech sector, adequate promotion of best behaviours and practices and adequate and early enough regulatory response to address potentially problematic behaviours and practices;
Amendment 21 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas any actor can be a FinTech, regardless of the kind of legal entity it is; whereas FinTech has developed against the background of a regulation originally designed for other business models and, consequently, has so far had to try and fit into existing pieces of regulation instead of regulation trying to fit it; whereas this results in a complex interplay between FinTech and regulation and in possible mismatches, with companies and service providers being regulated differently even when they perform substantially identical activities and with some activities not being well captured by regulation and the definitions stated therein; whereas the value chain in financial services increasingly includes alternative actors such as start-ups or tech- giants;
Amendment 23 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B a (new)
Recital B a (new)
Ba. whereas, given the complex interplay between FinTech and legislation and given the many pieces of legislation the implementation of which is or will be in some way affected by the development of FinTech, any approach to their promotion as well as to their regulation needs to be cross-sectoral and holistic; whereas, nevertheless, the diversity of the FinTech landscape and of the technologies involved calls for some degree of distinction, within such generally horizontal approach, between sectors and technologies;
Amendment 24 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B b (new)
Recital B b (new)
Bb. whereas there is an inherent tension between the nature of regulation, which is mostly principle-based and needs a margin of flexibility in order to be applied to concrete cases, and the nature of Information and Communication Technologies, which are automated and need discretionary rules from which no depart should be allowed; whereas this should be kept in mind when tackling challenges arising from the regulation of FinTech and when looking at the development of the use of so-called "smart contracts";
Amendment 47 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas FinTech can lead to considerable benefits, such as faster, cheaper, more transparent and better financial services for consumers and businesses, and open up many new business opportunities for European entrepreneurs; whereas, in particular and among many other sectors, it creates changes and opportunities in the post- trade value chain, in retail financial services, in the technologies used to ensure and check compliance with regulation (so-called RegTech) and in the insurance sector;
Amendment 51 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E a (new)
Recital E a (new)
Ea. whereas the development of FinTech can be expected to have some of its most significant impacts on the post- trade value chain, which includes services such as clearing, settlement, asset custody and regulatory reporting, where technologies such as DLT could have the potential to reshape the entire sector; whereas, within this value chain, some intermediaries such as custodians and CCPs could in the long term become redundant while some other functions will still have to be performed by independent, regulated entities;
Amendment 67 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G a (new)
Recital G a (new)
Ga. whereas retail investors are one of the groups which potentially stand to gain the most from the development of FinTech, but are also the group which is the most vulnerable to new risks emerging from this development, such as cyber- attacks or identity thefts;
Amendment 68 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas RegTech can lead to considerable benefits for financial institutions and supervisors by allowing new technologies to be used to address regulatory and compliance requirements more effectively, transparently and efficiently and in real-time; whereas the development of FinTech can not only challenge regulation but also offer precious assistance in implementing it and complying with it;
Amendment 99 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Calls on the Commission to draw up a comprehensive FinTech Action Plan, which should boost its Capital Markets Union (CMU) and Digital Single Market (DSM) strategies and aim at creating an environment of regulatory certainty, a competitive financial system, financial stability and consumer and investor protection;
Amendment 103 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Stresses the need, in order to properly monitor emerging trends and phenomena, for dedicated units and/or workstreams working on financial innovation within the authorities in charge of regulation; welcomes in this regards the work done by ESMA on monitoring financial innovation as well as the creation of a Financial Technology Task Force within the Commission and, at the global level, the progress on the FSB FinTech workplan;
Amendment 110 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Calls on the Commission to deploy a cross-sectoral, holistic approach to its work on FinTech, tailored to accommodate the different business models of FinTech players, drawing lessons from what is done in other jurisdictions;
Amendment 168 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Stresses that the FinTech companies contribute positively for the development of financial intermediation, but also create some new risks related to the financial stability; notes that the regulatory and supervisory authorities receive great deal of information through the balance sheets of established financial institutions related to the implementation of many regulatory frameworks such as the capital requirements, the leverage ratio and liquidity ratio and others, while in the case of non-banking lending entities such as Crowdfunding and Peer- to-Peer (P2P) it is difficult to obtain sufficient information on their financial intermediary activities of their balance sheets; therefore urges the regulatory and supervisory authorities to consider how they could obtain the appropriate supervisory information for maintaining financial stability and, where necessary, to impose regulatory constraints on their balance sheets in order to achieve and maintain financial stability.
Amendment 173 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Stresses that RegTech has the potential to improve and alleviate compliance processes and make them less burdensome, more effective and more cost-efficient; calls on the relevant authorities to clarify the legal conditions under which the outsourcing of compliance activities to third parties is allowed; recommends starting to experiment where there is no legacy of compliance yet, for example with the Central Securities Depository Regulation;
Amendment 180 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 a (new)
Paragraph 9 a (new)
9a. Calls on the Commission and Members states to ensure that governments build partnerships with FinTech providers in order to stimulate and increase the digitalisation of government services;
Amendment 190 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9 b (new)
Paragraph 9 b (new)
9b. Notes that FinTech startups find themselves particularly vulnerable to patent abusers, which are entities that buy patents with the intention of asserting them against businesses already using the technology rights through threats of patent infringement lawsuits; calls on the Commission to analyse the situation and suggest measures to counter patent abusers in the FinTech area.
Amendment 217 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Acknowledges the increasing combination of personal data and algorithms in order to provide services such as robo-advice; emphasises the efficiency potential of robo-advice and the positive effects on financial inclusiveness; stresses however that errors or biases in algorithms can cause systemic risk and harm consumers; asks the Commission and the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) to take these risks into account and, in particular, in the case of financial transactions, if evolutions in the technologies were to make errors impossible to correct on time; stresses, in this context, the need to look carefully at the interactions between new technologies underpinning financial transactions and applicable settlement finality rules in order to maintain safeguards against both human and technical errors and to preserve the orderly functioning of financial markets; highlights that human judgement and input will remain irreplaceable in many cases, at the very least in the design of the algorithms; believes that technology and human input should complement each other and that the most efficient way forward is to evolve towards "mixed models"; asks the Commission and the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) to take risks arising from technical errors and from data use into account in their analysis of risk on financial markets and to assess the liability aspects of data use;
Amendment 236 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Emphasises the need for end-to-end security across the whole financial services value chain; points to the large and diverse risks posed by cyber-attacks, targeting our financial markets infrastructure, currencies and data; calls on the Commission to make cyber security the number one priority in the FinTech Action Plan and calls on the European Supervisory Authorities and on ECB Banking Supervision to make it a key supervisory topic;
Amendment 245 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Highlights the need for the exchange of information and best practices between supervisors and market participants and between market participants themselves; calls on the Commission, the Member States, market participants and the EU Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) to set standards for major incident reporting and to remove barriers to information sharing; suggests exploring the potential benefits of and setting up a single point of contact for market participants in this regard as well as considering more coordinated approach in cybercrime investigation in the area of financial services given their increasingly cross- border character;
Amendment 278 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19 a (new)
Paragraph 19 a (new)
19a. Stresses the importance of interoperability of traditional and new payments solutions to achieve an integrated and innovative European payment market;
Amendment 285 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20 a (new)
Paragraph 20 a (new)
20a. Calls on the Commission to pay specific attention, in designing its FinTech action plan, to the needs of retail investors and the risks to which they might be vulnerable;
Amendment 293 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21 a (new)
Paragraph 21 a (new)
21a. Stresses that proper education of consumers on FinTech and adequate advice to retail investors are necessary in order for FinTech to become a real tool for financial inclusion and in order to fully reap the benefits of the wider and more diversified supply of financial services offered by FinTech; stresses that financial education and advice should also help consumers understand the risks stemming from these innovative technologies;
Amendment 309 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Underlines the need for increased digital skills within the financial sector, within regulatory bodies and within society as a whole; calls on the Commission to present best practices in the context of its Digital Skills and Jobs Coalition; also calls on the Commission and the co-legislators to ensure that corporate governance provisions in relevant legislation (CRD, MiFiD) appropriately favour the recruitment of digitally-skilled people;