EU digital finance

FFI welcomes EU-level outlines for
financial sector digitalisation

The European Commission’s Digital Finance Package outlines goals for digitalisation in the financial services sector. The strategic priorities of the package are removing fragmentation in the digital single market, facilitating financial innovation, promoting data-driven finance, and addressing the challenges and risks with digital transformation.
The EU digital single market needs a uniform set of rules, which must be even-handed, consistent and enduring. It is important that the regulatory treatment of new participants entering the market is equal to that of traditional financial companies.
Many of the elements in the EU digital finance strategy concern enhanced access to customer data. The Commission proposes, for example, that third parties would be granted more extensive access to financial sector data also in other financial sector services and products than the ones now lined out in the PSD2. Real-time access to public and regulated financial data is also planned.
The Commission also intends to offer digital tools to facilitate financial sector supervision and reporting.

The responsible application of digital finance enables the financial sector to provide better and more affordable services to its customer and the society at large. This can significantly improve the sector’s competitiveness, efficiency and scope for action. Success in this endeavour requires that the data of individual customers is handled confidentially and in an ethically sustainable manner.

Finland is quite advanced in harnessing digital technology, but we still have much room for development. The law requires that when customers are sold financial products, the key information on the product is presented in a standardised format. Sometimes, this information must be provided in paper format, even though an electronic document would be more convenient.