This Fintech Latvia Association had a wonderful opportunity to be part of Finfellas Riga 2023, Europe’s flagship P2P Investment, Crowdfunding & Fintech event and coordinate two legislation related panel discussions.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important and notable takeaways from the panel discussion “Licensing of platforms: learning points and what’s next?”

Transitional period for obtaining the license for crowdfunding platforms is ending in November 2023. We will dive into the learning points and experiences gained from those who have undergone the licensing and the regulator, will look into challenges and key points to keep in mind, when applying for the license, as well as take-ways to be brought to the policy makers to mature and improve the regulation.

✅Forum shopping for licensing is like choosing a spouse – you must not only get married, you also have to further live with the respective regulator; It must be done with caution.

✅Transitioning into being a licensed company is not an easy task, and many of those who were operating in the crowdfunding scene so far will not remain in the market or will change their business models to not fall under the ECSP regime;

✅Openness and approachability of the regulator rather than differences in interpretation of regulation is one of the aspects that plays a role when it comes to choosing the jurisdiction for licensing;

✅In Latvia there is 1 ECSP license issued so far, but at the same time market of investment platforms operating under MIFID regime with 7 new players in the last few years is growing.

Kudos to all the participants: Janis Laivins, Chairman Latvian Crowdfunding Association & Head Of Legal at LANDE; Vytautas Šenavičius, Chairman Lithuanian P2P Lending Association and Partner at Response Legal; Marta Cera, Attorney-at-Law at Ellex – Baltic circle of legal excellence; Constantin Fabricius, Managing Director at Digital Lending Association

Moderator: Tina Luse, Managing Director of Fintech Latvia Association

On the second day of Finfellas Riga 2023 event, June 2, Fintech Latvia Association presented a panel discussion “Corporate governance and fintech’s: when, why, how?”

Effective corporate governance structure may be seen as overly bureaucratic and thus incompatible with the early stages of fintechs. It is a requirement to receive a licence and to participate in public capital markets, though. In the discussion we will look into such topics as when and why to start thinking about it, what are the cornerstones of a good corporate governance and how to make it work and not just on the paper?

Some of the key takeaways include:

✅ Main note from the regulator is that the corporate governance is not something that is written in procedure papers and then forgotten, the company must really live by it by setting up respective structures;

✅ From all the components of ESG currently the G part is what is paid the most attention to when it comes to registering new platforms; But definitely the ESG is here to stay and those standards will also be included in the regulatory regime sooner rather than later;

✅ Transparency, accountability, clear project ownership within the company, effective complaint management procedures, clear AML and sanctions compliance procedures, are some of the base components of good corporate governance within an investment platform;

✅ Codes of conduct are pointless if there is no structure set up that is actually doing the job of checking how the companies are adhering to those principles;

✅ Taking your time to build out a solid corporate governance structure can actually help to build a solid and scalable business;

✅ If we are looking at failed business examples then in a good portion of cases we can guess that having had a solid corporate governance in place may have played a role in the business to survive. It’s not a magic pill, though. Business does fail. That’s life.

Many thanks to the participants: Sigita Kotlere, CEO & Board member at nectaro; Ansis Spridzans, Attorney at Spridzans, Snipe & Hramcenko; Sergejs Viskovskis, CEO & the Chairman at Indemo.eu; Constantin Fabricius, Managing Director at Digital Lending Association; Kristaps Soms, Head of Department at Latvijas Banka

Moderator: Tina Luse, Managing Director of Fintech Latvia Association