FinTech Global FS Regulatory Round-up - W/e 15 May 2026

In this edition we round up FinTech-related financial services regulatory developments for the week ending 15 May 2026.

ICYMI

• Fund tokenisation: new FCA rules and guidance to accelerate progress
• Enhancing Financial Services Bill announced in King's Speech 2026

UK

FCA announces reopening of the AI input zone

The FCA has announced that it is reopening the AI Input Zone to ask for views and examples to inform a good and poor practice publication on AI later this year. This component of the AI Lab is part of wider evidence gathering that will help shape the FCA’s future regulatory approach.

Responses to the questions are requested by 19 June 2026. [15 May 2026] #AI

BoE publishes joint statement with FCA and HM Treasury on frontier AI models and cyber resilience

The Bank of England (BoE) has published a joint statement by the Bank, the FCA and HM Treasury on frontier AI models and cyber resilience. HM Government and the regulators judge that firms should be taking active step across several domains including: governance and strategy; identification and risk management of vulnerabilities; managing risks from third parties; protection; and response and recovery. The statement is not intended to introduce new expectations, rather it brings together and reinforces existing messages to support firms as the operating environment becomes more complex. [15 May 2026] #AI #CyberResilience

BoE speech: Operational resilience in a rapidly changing world

The Bank of England (BoE) has published a speech by Liz Oakes, an external member of BoE’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) at the KPMG and Fitch Ratings London Banking Summit. In Ms Oakes speech, she sets out the growing importance of operational and cyber resilience in the context of advancing technology. She underlines the expectations on firms to develop effective risk management frameworks as the first line of defence. Ms Oakes also highlights the work of regulators and policymakers to ensure resilience against these evolving risks. [14 May 2026] #OperationalResilience

BoE speech: The Importance of Choice in Payments

BoE has published a speech by its Chief Cashier and Senior Advisor to the Governors and chair of the Retail Payments Infrastructure Board (RPIB), Victoria Cleland. In Ms Cleland’s speech, she sets out why preserving choice in payments is important, highlighting its role in supporting financial inclusion, strengthening system resilience, and promoting competition. She outlines how a diverse payment landscape fuels innovation and helps to ensure people and businesses can pay in ways that work for them, and highlights the key role that cash continues to play. [14 May 2026] #Payments

Government publishes King’s Speech and briefing notes for new legislation

HM Government has published the King’s Speech 2026 and its accompanying briefing notes. The notes provide further information on each of the Bills and draft Bills addressed in the speech. The proposed legislation which may be of interest to financial services firms include: the Regulating for Growth Bill; the Enhancing Financial Services Bill; and the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill.

The Regulating for Growth Bill intends to:

• strengthen the Growth Duty; and
• create sandbox powers.

The Enhancing Financial Services Bill intends to:

• modernise consumer protections and redress arrangements to reflect today’s markets and maintain confidence;
• consolidate the regulatory framework to enable stronger coordination and clearer responsibilities, reduce fragmentation of the regulators and support innovation;
• ensure that the administrative burden on firms is proportionate without compromising on core consumer, prudential and market protections;
• enable credit unions to expand; and
• support lending and investment.

The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill intends to:

• expand the remit of existing regulations to better protect more of the core services people and businesses rely on;
• ensure cyber regulators are more effective and consistent to protect essential services; and
• ensure the UK is resilient to new threats. [13 May 2026] #CyberSecurity #CyberResilience

BoE final report: DLT Innovation Challenge 2025

The Bank of England (BoE) has published the outcomes of the 2025 Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Innovation Challenge, a joint initiative between the BoE and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub London Centre to explore how DLT could be applied to wholesale payments and settlement. The report also details how the Challenge has informed BoE views on DLT and the topics of settlement finality, scalability, network and asset control and interoperability

The report does not constitute a policy position or commitment by the BoE or the BIS. [12 May 2026] #DLT

Lords report: Time is money – how regulators can support growth

The House of Lords Industry and Regulators Committee has published a report calling on HM Government to give clear guidance to regulators on trade-offs between supporting economic growth and their other responsibilities, such as consumer and environmental protections. The Committee further recommends that regulators need to provide speed and certainty in their decision making to help businesses make investments and to plan ahead.

The Committee also urges HM Government to:

• provide political cover where it wants a regulator to be more open to risk;
• legislate to ensure the regulatory framework can adapt to new technologies, products and services, if necessary through a Regulatory Reform Bill;
• estimate the extent to which HM Government’s March 2025 Action Plan will reduce the actual cost of compliance with regulation, rather than just the administrative costs of regulation;
• work with regulators to identify where lead regulator models could be implemented more broadly and speedily, including across departmental boundaries; and
• ensure sponsoring departments have suitable metrics to hold regulators to account for their pace and the outcomes of their work.

The Committee calls on regulators to:

• speed up their internal processes to reduce delays that make the UK a less attractive prospect for investment;
• proactively engage with industry to ensure companies know what is required of them; and
• make use of tools such as regulatory sandboxes to test innovative products, services and technologies. [12 May 2026] #RegulatorySandbox

FIC: Impact of AI on Retail Financial Services, Roundtable for Mills Review

The Financial Inclusion Commission (FIC) has published a release on its roundtable during which Sheldon Mills, Executive Director of the FCA, received input from civil society organisations for the Mills Review into the Long-Term Impact of AI on Retail Financial Services. Points raised included: addressing exclusion; prioritising inclusive innovation; tackling bias, explainability and transparency: and constructing the regulatory framework and standards, and reducing fraud. [12 May 2026] #AI

FCA adds capital requirements to operate PISCES platform

The FCA has updated its Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System (PISCES) sandbox webpage, PISCES Sandbox: apply to run a platform, to include a capital requirement that an operator of a PISCES platform must hold at least £150,000 in capital at all times. This is the standard minimum requirement that applies to multi-lateral trading facilities (MTFs). [11 May 2026] #PISCES

Europe

ESMA TRV analysis: Quantum computing in financial markets – applications, investments and prospects

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published a trends, risks and vulnerabilities (TRV) analysis on quantum computing in financial markets. The report examines the funding and investment landscape of the global quantum ecosystem and assesses the prospects for the application of quantum computing in financial market activities. The paper notes that, alongside opportunities, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer would pose a significant threat to cybersecurity, as it could undermine some of the cryptographic protocols currently used. [13 May 2026] #QuantumComputing

AMLA consults on proposed draft RTS for Home-Host Supervisory Cooperation

AMLA has published a consultation on proposed draft RTS that set out a framework for cooperation between home and host supervisors of cross-border groups of obliged entities.

The draft RTS address supervisors of groups of obliged entities operating across borders in the financial and non-financial sectors, and form part of a broader cooperation framework that also include AML/CFT supervisory colleges and cooperation guidelines. They specify the respective roles of home and host supervisors and establish practical arrangements for effective day-to-day cooperation. Key elements include:

• practical arrangements for supervisory cooperation and communication channels, accommodating integrated digital solutions while maintaining flexibility;
• a simplified disclosure regime within the EU supervisory system, where information exchanged may be shared with other system members without prior consent from the originating supervisor, subject to notification; and
• provisions enabling home and host supervisors to conduct cross-border inquiries and coordinated activities via common approaches.

AMLA will consult on reflections on the proposed draft RTS by holding a public hearing on 28 May 2026. [11 May 2026] #Digitalisation

Australia

Budget to cut regulatory costs

The Australian Government has announced measures in the 2025-26 Budget to reduce regulatory costs. Relevantly to the financial services sector, the Budget includes measures to:

• reduce regulatory burdens in the financial sector by progressing 14 legislative reforms, including increasing the monetary thresholds for large proprietary companies, improving the efficiency of climate-related financial disclosures, modernising business communications with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and increasing the cap on banks' covered bond issuance;
• reduce duplicative, inconsistent or opaque data requests through 13 actions by financial regulators, while delivering more than 50 commitments in the Better Regulation Roadmap;
• support financial innovation by facilitating testing of use cases for tokenisation, undertaking market analysis of a tokenised government bond and developing a new strategic plan for the payments system; and
• further consult on reform options for the superannuation performance test to remove barriers to investment while strengthening member protections.

See our tax team's analysis of the Budget here: Federal Budget 2026: Back to the future | Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer | Global law firm.  [12 May 2026] #Tokenisation #Payments

Hong Kong

Cross-Agency Steering Group welcomes first sector-based operational guide on transition finance

The Hong Kong Green and Sustainable Finance Cross-Agency Steering Group has welcomed the release of the Transition Finance Operational Reference Guide – Phase 1 Report: Mobilising Finance for the Transition of the Technology Sector, developed by an industry working group under its transition finance workstream to drive the development of transition finance in Hong Kong.

The Phase 1 report builds on the steering group's strategic priorities for 2026 to 2028 (see our previous update) to scale up transition finance with practical guidance, and provides a toolkit for financial institutions and corporates to operationalise global frameworks and principles, promoting good practices through a sector-based approach.

The working group selected the information and communications technology (ICT) sector as a pilot.  The Phase 1 report focuses on entity‑level financing and investment, exploring how financial institutions can support a company’s overall climate transition strategy through general corporate‑purpose financing.  It highlights commonalities across recognised international frameworks and identifies a core set of entity‑level transition‑related information and metrics material to the ICT sector, which are central to how such information may be utilised by financial institutions to better understand and assess an entity’s transition strategy.

The report also addresses implementation challenges by setting out case studies to illustrate how to apply international principles and guidance in practice.  Further phases will cover activity‑level financing and investment, as well as stewardship and engagement.  [15 May 2026] #TransitionFinance

HKMA launches digital licensing platform for chief executive, alternate chief executive, and director approvals and related notifications

The HKMA has announced the launch of the Digital Licensing Platform to enable authorised institutions (AIs) to submit applications for approval to become a chief executive, alternate chief executive, or director under section 71 of the Banking Ordinance (and related notifications).

The new platform facilitates a paperless licensing process, with fully automated functions including web-based licensing forms with auto-fill and skip logic features, electronic signatures, and electronic approval letters.  It aims to enhance efficiency, security, and transparency through a streamlined digital channel for submission, communication and tracking of applications and notifications.

AIs are encouraged to submit applications and related notifications through the new platform, which commenced operation on 11 May 2026.  The URL of the platform and the user guide are available on the Supervisory Communication Website.  The HKMA will hold briefings on the use of the platform (details will be provided separately).

The HKMA aims to discontinue the acceptance of paper licensing forms on 1 October 2026.  [11 May 2026] #Digitalisation

Malaysia

BNM and Bank Indonesia sign MoU to strengthen bilateral cooperation

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) has announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bank Indonesia to strengthen bilateral cooperation between the two central banks. The MoU guides cooperation in a range of central banking areas including: monetary policy; financial stability and macroprudential policy; payment systems and digitalisation; financial sector development; capacity-building initiatives; and information sharing.  [11 May 2026] #Payments #Digitalisation

US

OCC Semiannual Risk Perspective, Spring 2026: credit, cyber, and geopolitical risks

The OCC has published its Semiannual Risk Perspective for Spring 2026. The publication highlights key issues facing the federal banking system. It identifies credit, market, operational, and compliance risks as the key risk themes, alongside a discussion of innovation. Specific concerns highlighted include:

• credit conditions and refinancing risk in certain commercial real estate segments and private credit markets;
• modest increases in past-due loans in some consumer portfolios;
• the growing sophistication of cybercriminal groups and foreign state-sponsored actors targeting the financial sector; and
• elevated levels of fraud and scams.

The report also flags the importance of understanding AI tools being used in cybersecurity functions, and notes that geopolitical tensions are increasing sanctions and money laundering risk, straining bank compliance systems. [May 7, 2026] #AI

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