Partners Oliver Bell and Lucy Frew, along with senior counsel Lisa Penn-Lettsome and associate Jude Hodge have provided legal commentary on the key issues and developments in FinTech.
The FinTech market in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) has developed over the last 12 months in a rather interesting way. Neither the BVI Government nor the BVI Financial Services Commission (FSC) – the BVI's financial services regulator – has issued any official statements on the FinTech market. The approach taken to regulation of the industry has been cautious but commercially sensitive. Whilst there is an acknowledgment that some regulation will eventually be required, BVI has not been eager to take the initiative to regulate this space but, rather, to continue to monitor international trends and developments whilst informing themselves about blockchain, smart contracts and crypto-currencies. In spite of the lack of Fintech-specific regulation, BVI's global reputation as a premier company formation jurisdiction continues to hold true in the FinTech space where BVI continues to be the jurisdiction of choice for companies providing various FinTech services. According to CoinShares survey of 15 of the largest crypto-currency exchanges, BVI ranks as the second largest crypto-currency market in the world with a trading volume at mid-2018 of USD78.5 billion, second to the USA's USD83.8 billion in trading volume.
Reproduced with permission from Chambers and Partners (published in March 2019).
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