1. ESMA welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Commission Consultation paper on Fintech: a more competitive and innovative financial sector (hereafter “the Consultation”).
2. Fintech and, technological innovation in general, have been the drivers of a number of developments in the financial sector in recent years. Indeed, new forms of services and businesses such as automated advice or crowdfunding have emerged. ESMA sees these developments as a positive evolution as long as they are aimed at improving consumer financial experience and facilitate financial inclusion. ESMA would also want to stress that it adheres to the core principles (technological neutrality, proportionality and market integrity) highlighted by the Commission and agrees that any EU policies aiming to ensure the financial sector takes advantage of cutting-edge technologies, while remaining sound and safe for investors, need to integrate these principles.
3. In this response, ESMA wishes to share with the Commission some reflections on a number of topics mentioned in the Consultation which appear relevant to ESMA:
   • Artificial intelligence and big data analytics for automated advice and businesses;
   • Crowdfunding;
   • Reg Tech;
   • Outsourcing and cloud computing;
   • Distributed ledger technology;
   • Role of regulation and supervisors; and
   • Role of industry: standards and interoperability

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is publishing this Consultation Paper as part of its consultations on Level 2 measures under the Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR) as well as certain amendments to the Level 2 measures under EMIR in order to take into account legal developments as well as to ensure consistency, where relevant, between the frameworks of both regulations

Contents

Section 1 is the executive summary of the document. Section 2 explains the background to our proposals. Section 3 includes detailed information on the procedure and criteria for registration as TR under SFTR. Section 4 details the use of internationally agreed reporting standards, the reporting logic under SFTR and the main aspects of the structure of an SFT report. Section 5 covers the requirements regarding transparency of data and aggregation and comparison of data. Section 6 details the access levels of authorities. Section 7 contains the tables of fields, for the relevant types of SFTs, as well as a summary of all the questions.

Next Steps

ESMA will consider the feedback it received to this document in the fourth quarter of 2016. The final report and the draft technical standards will be submitted to the European Commission for endorsement by the end of Q1/beginning Q2 2017.