Law Commons^™

Technology Regulation By Default: Platforms, Privacy, And The Cfpb, Rory Van Loo

Faculty Scholarship

In the absence of a technology-focused regulator, diverse administrative agencies have been forced to develop regulatory models for governing their sphere of the data economy. These largely uncoordinated efforts offer a laboratory of regulatory experimentation on governance architecture. This symposium essay explores what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has done in its first several years to regulate financial technology (“fintech”), in the context of broader technology-related concerns identified in the literature. It begins with a survey of what the CFPB has undertaken using more traditional administrative agency tools—enforcement and rulemaking—in areas such as privacy, consumer control over data, and …

The Law And Finance Of Initial Coin Offerings, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez, Nydia Remolina Leon

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The rise of new technologies is changing the way companies raise funds. Along with the increase of crowdfunding in recent years, the use of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) has emerged more recently as a new form to raise capital. Companies in the United States raised more than $4 billion in 2017 and over $6.3 billion were raised through ICOs in the first three months of 2018. In a typical ICO, a company receives cryptocurrencies in exchange for certain rights embodied in “tokens”, whose nature, treatment and implications are generating controversy among securities regulators around the world.

Regulating Fintech, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

The financial crisis of 2008 has led to dramatic changes in the way that finance is regulated: the Dodd-Frank Act imposed broad and systemic regulation on the industry on a level not seen since the New Deal. But the financial regulatory reforms enacted since the crisis have been premised on an outdated idea of what financial services look like and how they are provided. Regulation has failed to take into account the rise of financial technology (or “fintech”) firms and the fundamental changes they have ushered in on a variety of fronts, from the way that banking works, to the …

Financial Regulation In The Bitcoin Era, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

The recent decade has witnessed an extraordinary degree of innovation in the financial sector. Developments in financial technology, computing power, and networking theory have allowed decentralized online platforms such as Bitcoin to fundamentally change the way that financial services are provided. While these innovations have been applauded by many as bringing a welcome degree of competition to a sector long dominated by powerful incumbents, they also create a set of challenges for current financial regulation. How do fiduciary standards apply to algorithms? How does online finance affect the behavior of investors? And more generally, how can regulators monitor and constrain …

Fintech's Double Edges, Christopher G. Bradley

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The pace of change in financial technologies has quickened due to the rapid advances in technology from the late 1990s through today, exemplified by the advance of handheld devices and applications and the pervasiveness of the Internet in every facet of commerce. New financial technologies--commonly identified by the portmanteau "FinTech" or "fmtech"--have already reshaped many commercial practices that affect businesses and consumers, and they are likely to change many more.

The increasing availability and sophistication of FinTech offers both promises and perils. Artificial intelligence-driven algorithms purport to improve access to credit on "objective" criteria but may sometimes reinforce longstanding discriminatory …

New Art For The People: Art Funds & Financial Technology, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Wealthy people have invested in art since time immemorial. But the modem art market emerged only in the late nineteenth century, as private wealth gradually spread to the bourgeoisie. As the art market grew and the most desirable artworks became extremely valuable, individuals and institutions began to form "art funds" to invest in this promising new asset class. In 1904, a group of Parisian art collectors formed La Peau d'Ours, the first private art investment club. Between 1974 and 1980, the British Rail Pension Fund invested £40 million in art. And in the 2000s, many private investment companies created …

Regulating Robo Advice Across The Financial Services Industry, Tom Baker, Benedict G. C. Dellaert

All Faculty Scholarship

Automated financial product advisors – “robo advisors” – are emerging across the financial services industry, helping consumers choose investments, banking products, and insurance policies. Robo advisors have the potential to lower the cost and increase the quality and transparency of financial advice for consumers. But they also pose significant new challenges for regulators who are accustomed to assessing human intermediaries. A well-designed robo advisor will be honest and competent, and it will recommend only suitable products. Because humans design and implement robo advisors, however, honesty, competence, and suitability cannot simply be assumed. Moreover, robo advisors pose new scale risks that …