17/04/2025
Finantsinspektsioon held a roundtable discussion on 16 April for the financial sector to discuss ways of strengthening cooperation on financial innovation between state institutions and companies working in the financial sector. The supervisor presented the goals it has set to support innovation, the most important of which are to refresh the Innovation Hub, to set up a portal for licence applications, and to reduce the regulatory and administrative burden by 10% during 2025.
The Innovation Hub receives 150–200 requests a year, the majority of which concern licensing, asking for example whether a licence is needed and when, or which legislative framework applies in a particular context. Finantsinspektsioon started a project about a year ago to modernise the whole licence application procedure across the financial sector. The project will make licensing procedures more transparent and much more digital, and this has received positive feedback from the market. It is planned that the new licensing portal will be operational in the autumn.
Finantsinspektsioon is giving companies more support in testing new solutions, and so it has made its regulatory sandbox simpler to use and better targeted at entities that come under financial supervision.
Member of the Finantsinspektsioon management board Siim Tammer said that it is important for encouraging innovation that legislation should not be excessively restrictive across the financial sector. “There are hundreds of legal standards that regulate the financial sector, and on top of them there are guidelines, memos and handbooks. The amount of regulation is constantly increasing, but at Finantsinspektsioon we believe it has now reached a point where we should focus on reviewing the existing framework and reducing the regulatory burden for the financial sector wherever possible. This must be done though in a way that does not cause any hurt to consumers of financial sector services. We are working with companies in the sector to find ways of simplifying and modernising the legislative environment”, he said.
It is important to underline that Finantsinspektsioon is not a legislator and can not withdraw or repeal any legal acts. It can however make proposals for changes to the law and offer input to policy makers and decision makers.