First Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia Sergey Shvetsov stressed the growing influence of innovations on the market and their role in making financial services more accessible: “Our goal is not simply to make payments or loans readily available to people. As the megaregulator, we see access to finance as a means to make the market competitive, to protect the customer, who is aware of his rights and can get higher quality services at lower prices. We expect new technologies to enable us to solve these tasks more effectively”.

The Bank of Russia launched its financial market e-communication project in 2014. Making access to financial services easier for people is one of the key goals of this project. The Bank of Russia is currently drafting a roadmap for the project in close liaison with the business, and the national executive bodies and legislators.

The main takeaways of the survey were presented by the E-Money Association Chairman of the Board Viktor Dostov.

The survey aims to develop recommendations for the regulation of innovative technology and business practice in lending to private individuals – microfinance IT studies were conducted during client scoring and identification, loan granting and redemption, with a special focus on personal data protection, false ID countermeasures, as well as innovative business models such as mutual lending.

The results of the survey laid the basis of draft recommendations for implementing risk-oriented ‘higher risk-more attention’ regulation. The implementation of these regulations is expected to maintain a high level of client protection and prevent a system-wide drop in quality of retail finance standards.

Similar solutions can be used to effectively regulate new technologies in insurance, private investment and retail payments.

The survey results debate produced a shared opinion that the focus should be kept on drafting industry standards, spreading the best practices, as well as on current risk analysis by both the regulator and the SROs.

The survey was commissioned by the Bank of Russia and conducted in 2H 2014. The basis for the survey is Russian and foreign legislative base, field research, expert opinions from market participants, the regulator and the government. The results will be used for the drafting of the Bank of Russia’s innovative financial services regulation roadmap.

Financial markets megaregulator, Project Group №1