Financial Technology (FinTech)

What is FinTech?

FinTech — a term used to describe organizations that leverage technology to create innovative financial products, services and business models — is revolutionizing the financial services landscape.

FinTech key player

Knowledge Pioneers  Law Firm FinTech practice consists of a global, sophisticated, and multidisciplinary team of lawyers with a deep understanding of the financial and technology industries from our market-leading practices. Pioneers attorneys leverage their current and/or prior experience as government regulators, in-house lawyers, and outside counsel to industry trailblazers.

 
 

Our FinTech lawyers have a successful track record helping clients navigate the legal, business, and regulatory issues associated with this sector, enabling them to successfully achieve their business objectives, protect their technology and intellectual property, create competitive advantages for their companies and investors, and navigate applicable regulatory frameworks. Pioneers collective experience ensures our lawyers are committed to developing creative, commercial, and constructive legal solutions for our clients.

Our FinTech Legal Practice Team has been advising various start-ups in the Fintech and e-commerce arenas (in PSP, Crowdfunding, Regtech, Credit scoring, peer-to-peer, etc.).

Our business has evolved, but our vision remains the same. In fact, being a multi-disciplinary boutique law firm with strong internal professional principles that bring together talented legal practitioners, we strive to serve as a bridge between the economic actors in the Kingdom and the rest of the world, thus, facilitating Foreign Direct Investors in the Kingdom towards the proper implementation of the Kingdom Vision 2030.

FinTech Assessment Form

This FinTech Assessment Form is designed to provide us with the following:

a clearer understanding of the regulatory pathway for your project and activities
indication as to whether your activity is regulated, and if so, who it is regulated by and what are your options for bringing the activity to market
guidance on the regulations related to different technologies that you may be using

Capabilities

Knowledge Pioneers Law Firm has been deeply involved in Fintech sector where we have capable of assisting startups, SMEs, and tech companies to kickstart Fintech solutions below:

Fintechs that provide Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) create a bridge between third parties such as fintechs and banks and therefore allow the third party to interface with banks. Third parties may want to do this to access bank data to include it as part of their solution (e.g. a house buyer website providing mortgage information) or they may want to access customer information held by the bank to provide the customers with more personalized service. Banks may want to provide a “white labelled” solution to their customers which is powered by a fintech and connected through an API. ” Mobile / E-Wallet Payments.

Fintech solutions that aggregate publicly available information from different sources (e.g. savings products available from banks) to enable customers to compare the different products and make an informed choice.

Fintechs operating in this area provide services to banks to help them either reduce costs, increase efficiency or increase revenue. Examples include chatbots that may help improve customer service or software that helps automate back-office functions.

Solutions that aim to reduce business costs, increase automation, and enhance the process efficiencies. This includes, but not limited to, solutions to improve customer engagement, accounting, etc.

Fintechs operating in this area use technology to improve the efficiency of capital market operations. Examples include tools that automate part of the listing process or tools that enabling trades to be executed faster.

Fintech solutions that provide advice or recommendations related to capital market products and solutions.

Intelligent cash management fintechs are involved in the management of cash. For companies, this may include supporting the company’s treasury functions with improving working capital management, invoice management etc.

Credit scoring fintech solutions either speed up the credit scoring process, provide a more accurate credit score through the use of alternative data (e.g. social media data) or provide consumers with the ability to access their credit score and undertake activities to improve it.

Platforms that provide users with the ability to buy, sell or trade cryptocurrency.

If customers have investment products/bank accounts with a number of different providers, customer aggregation fintechs can help aggregate customers financial information in one place to help users manage their money better. They may also support customers with budgeting and financial planning.

Fintech solutions that support financial institutions to better manage their customer risks in areas such as fraud monitoring and credit risk. They may use tools such as machine learning to more accurately identify potential fraud or predict when a customer is likely to become a credit risk.

Cybersecurity solutions are involved in protecting the client’s IT systems against cyber hacking, data breaches, etc. Examples include anti-virus software, monitoring cyberattack incidents and tools that identify suspicious communication.

Any Fintech activity that helps regulated financial services organizations in organizing and maintaining data processes including managing data access, quality, integration, etc.

Equity crowdfunding fintech platforms allow investors to invest a relatively small amount of money into private companies in exchange for equity in the companies. The platforms enable private companies to aggregate the funds raised from the large pool of investors.

Fintechs that offer full digital insurance solutions and plans for various areas, such as health, home, car etc. Such fintechs may use telematic solutions that use data to develop a better understanding of the client and assess the risks of them making a claim.

Solutions that provide third parties with the ability to issue their own coin or issuers of coins.

Insurance marketplace aggregators are involved in aggregating information on insurance products from different insurance providers into a tool that customers can use to find the best products based on their requirements.

Insurance marketplace aggregators are involved in aggregating information on insurance products from different insurance providers into a tool that customers can use to find the best products based on their requirements.

Peer to peer or Micro insurtech solutions enable individuals to come together to form a group and apply for insurance as a group. The insurer will insure the entire group and the cost of the premium will be divided between all individuals. This may result in lower premiums than if each individual went to the insurer directly.

Investment brokering fintech solutions use technology or new business models to make it easier, cheaper or faster for investors to purchase securities. Examples include mobile apps that allow investors to purchase stocks quickly or tools that gamify stock market investment. The fintech solutions may provide access to individuals that previously were not able to invest in the stock market.

Customer Onboarding fintech solutions support financial institutions to speed up or improve the process of customer onboarding. This could include automating parts of the process, using alternative methods to collect customer information or using alternative data sources to verify customer identity.

Solutions that help businesses manage their legal operations including binding digital signature, maintaining the chain of custody for the documents, providing audit trails for financial documents, etc.

Loan processing fintech solutions speed up and reduce the cost of loan processing and monitoring. This could be through using technology to automate the loan process, create better data structures to manage the information required for the loan application or using transactional data combined with machine learning to predict when a borrower is likely to go into default before they do.

allow individuals to store funds on a virtual wallet that is usually an app in a mobile device. The individuals can top up e-wallets with funds and then use the e-wallet as a type of storage or to make payments. ” Payment gateways.

Money transfer is related to the transfer domestically or internationally into a different currency.

Fintechs that operate as neo-banks/ challenger banks are focused on providing fully digital/branchless banking solutions. The main advantage challenger banks have over established banks is that they do not have legacy systems and legacy processes. They can therefore use technology to automate many of their processes and first principles thinking to provide customers with a better experience. This, therefore, allows them to develop faster, more personalized and often cheaper solutions for customers.

Fintech Solutions that enable lenders to provide loans to borrowers directly through a platform. This can involve a number of unrelated lenders coming together to provide a loan to a borrower.

support online and offline retailers take non-cash payments such as debit card and credit card payments. They provide an interface between the customer and the retailer and usually work with partner banks that process the payments. This reduces the reliance on retailers having to accept cash.

Fintechs developing payment infrastructure solutions are involved in making the existing processing of payments faster, cheaper and easier. They usually work with existing payment processers to help improve their solutions.

Payment management solutions is a broad area related to the automation of payment activities that may have previously had to be carried out manually. This could include automating regular monthly payments (e.g. a regular bill) or paying a large number of individuals at the same time.

Peer to peer payment solutions provide a platform that enables an individual to make a payment to another individual easier, cheaper and faster. This could be through banks or through distributed ledger that allows payments to be made without banks being involved in the transaction.

Regtech solutions enable regulated financial companies to comply with regulation locally and internationally. Examples include solutions that help financial companies to automate their responses to regulators or services that keep up to date on the latest regulation changes and requirements.

Factual research in financial services ranges from providing education on an area of financial services or providing research reports to support investors make better decisions. Fintech solutions operating in this space can use technology to automate the provision of research or create new business models such as platforms that support peer to peer research/crowd knowledge.

Reward-based crowdfunding platforms enable individuals to donate relatively small amounts of money to companies or projects in return for non-equity-based rewards (e.g. funding the development of a new toy in exchange for receiving one of the first toys that are produced). This is often compared to e-commerce as it can be used by companies to forward sell new products and use the funds to develop the products.

Fintech solutions focused on automated, algorithm-driven investment in capital markets with little to no human intervention.

Fintech saving tools support individuals to save more. Example business models include apps that enable users to save for specific items or tools that round up payments made with the difference being put into a savings account.

Social trading/advisory models are where investors can observe the investment behaviour of peers and follow their investment strategies or provide peer to peer recommendations/advice for investments.

Suptech solutions enable regulators to better supervise and monitor companies that they are regulating. Suptech solutions could help regulators to automate parts of the authorization processes, speed up the responses to requests from financial companies or use machine learning to identify non-compliance.

Debt Securitization covers the trading of debt or the issuance of debt by corporates or government agencies. Fintech solutions operating in this area look to improve the way the debt is traded or issued. This could include areas such as fractionalized bonds or secondary markets for private debt.

Legal Writing

Knowledge Pioneers Fintech team collaborates with our Contracts & International Transactions teams to deliver the best-in-class and cutting-edge legal instruments and infrastructure that organize the whole business hustle-free. Among tens of instruments, we excel at the following:

  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookies Policy
  • User Data Management Policy
  • Conflict of Interests
  • Limitation of Liability
  • Protection of Interests
  • Third-Party Service Provider Agreements
  • E-Contracts
  • Smart Contracts
  • Integration
  • Transparency
  • Cost-efficiency

Counselling & Law Compliance

We are familiar with Saudi and regional laws, regulations, and guidelines that apply to the Fintech sector, allowing us to provide the full range of counseling and compliance advice with Capital Market  Authority (CMA) & Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) regulations. We process all types of Fintech industry applications and identify potential risks and offer clients creative suggestions on how to avoid them.

 

Knowledge Pioneers’s Private Equity practice works with private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies to maximize the value of their investments from entry through the exit. We also provide corporate governance (review, analyze, and draft HR, Finance, contract, management, internal policy, etc., as well as contract and day-to-day business) and business counseling to companies and their Boards of Directors and Boards committees. Furthermore, we provide highly professional crafted legal advice and regular newsletters for listed companies on matters including but not limited to law compliance, governance, regulations, and circulars issued by Saudi Capital Market Authority and the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul).

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