Global Expertise & Impact
Inclusive & Sustainable FinTech
Impact Case
Working with a regional development bank, researchers from the Fii conducted Access to Digital Finance Studies for Latin America and provided insights on how FinTech platforms are widening access to finance and improving financial outcomes for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
Collaborating with another development agency, Fii researchers conducted one of ASEAN region’s first studies on how consumers are accessing credit through online alternative financing platforms in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.
Collaborating with a multilateral institution, Fii researchers also produced a report on new paradigms for financing off-grid solar in Africa.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, experts at the Fii partnered with the World Bank and the Word Economic Forum (WEF) to understand how fintechs played a pivotal role to provide capital and finance to millions of customers and businesses impacted by the economic, operational and humanitarian emergency."
Fii’s Global Expertise
Over the last decade, members of the Financial Innovation for Impact (Fii) team have produced some of the most impactful applied research on financial technologies, and on the state of national, regional and global fintech markets covering industry verticals including digital banking, lending, capital raising, payments and insurance.
Fii researchers have collaborated with dozens of incumbents, telecoms, and digital platforms, and more than 5,000 fintechs and 200 industry associations in over 190 jurisdictions to collect and analyse empirical data and inform strategic market development and evidence-based regulation and policymaking. Collectively, experts at the Fii have published more than 50 widely referenced fintech market research studies and policy documents, as well as a suite of interactive and open-access digital tools to visualise industry data and effectively disseminate research findings. Many of these research outputs focused on how fintech and other forms of digital financial services can improve access to finance for consumers and MSMEs in emerging markets and developing economies.
Besides financial inclusion, sustainability is also a key area of our applied research, focusing on how innovative financial channels, instruments and systems can be leveraged to mobilise green capital and contribute to a more sustainable digital economy.
Digital Assets & Digital Economy
Fii’s Expertise
Experts at the Financial Innovation for Impact (Fii) have published some of the most ground-breaking and influential studies on the increasing adoption of distributed ledger technology, the rise of decentralised finance and token-based economy, the development of enterprise blockchain, the emergence of new digital money and the evolving landscape of cryptoasset regulation. Working with both public and private sector stakeholders, Fii researchers and research affiliates produced the world’s first global cryptocurrency industry benchmarking study examining centralised exchange, payment, custody and mining intermediaries and their activities back in 2017.
Fii experts published one of the first reports on the development of permissioned enterprise blockchains also in 2017. Fii researchers also created a widely cited conceptual paper to discern distributed ledger technology (DLT) systems and one of world’s first study to examine digital assets from a private law perspective. Fii experts are also behind the creation of the hugely influential Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), providing evidence-base to facilitate informed discussion about the climate aspects of digital assets. Digital assets experts at the Fii were also instrumental in creating the Cambridge Digital Assets for Regulator (CDAR) online executive education programme.
Impact Case
Fii experts, researchers and research affiliates are currently advising a G7 central bank on the design and development of its CBDC by providing both policy and technical inputs.
Fii experts have helped a number of jurisdictions to devise evidence-based, fit-for-purpose, and future-proof regulatory framework for cryptoasset and related activities with consumer protection in mind.
Fiil researchers are collaborating with standard-setting bodies as well as private sector stakeholders to expand the empirical evidence on cryptoasset industry and especially regarding to private-issued stablecoins and decentralised finance (DeFi) from a risk and resilience perspective.
Fii experts are engaging with a number of jurisdictions in EMDEs to help advise them on a wide array of thematic areas from AML/CTF in cryptoasset, CBDCs to bespoke development of regulatory and supervisory regimes.
Regulation & Regulatory Innovation
Impact Case
Through a multi-year collaboration with a global development bank, researchers from the Fii have undertaken some of the world’s largest and most comprehensive applied research on regulatory approaches to fintech, and regulatory innovation. These provide actionable insights, good practices and lessons learned from more than 130 jurisdictions, providing an evidence-base for financial authorities and decision-makers seeking to develop appropriate responses to fintech in their markets, and a foundation for Fii’s technical assistance programmes.
The Fii is delivering a technical assistance programme in Indonesia for financial services regulators and supervision to implement effective, data-driven regulation and oversight of digital financial services. Fii’s capabilities in capacity building, bespoke regulatory education, country-level research, digital fintech tools and scalable technical assistance will support financial authorities in creating a more enabling regulatory environment for fintech and the advancement of financial inclusion. Fii’s delivery model establishes locally embedded teams, leverages Indonesian market expertise and close working relationships with local regulatory institutions.
Fii’s Expertise
Financial Innovation for Impact’s (Fii) team of world-leading experts in the fields of regulation and regulatory innovation includes many former financial regulators, supervisors and policymakers with first-hand experience of working with and for financial authorities as they develop their regulatory responses to fintech.
Experts at the Fii have published more than 50 widely referenced fintech regulatory research studies and policy reports, contributed to regulatory drafting, trained more than 1500 financial regulators in 140+ countries, and developed a suite of interactive and open-access digital tools to visualise regulatory data and provide actionable insights.
The Fii Team has created the world’s largest dedicated digital community platform for financial regulators, which facilitates connection, coordination, cooperation, and collaboration to support their work on the digital transformation of financial services. This platform provides scalable, digitised, and cost-effective technical assistance to support evidence-based regulation and regulatory innovation for the global regulatory community. This is particularly impactful for financial authorities in emerging market and development economies, where the demand for technical assistance is high but capacity and resources are constrained.
Supervision & Supervisory Technology
Impact Case
The Lab team has proven essential to the growth of the suptech movement and industry. The Lab's annual State of SupTech Report presents insights from financial supervisors worldwide, highlighting progress, challenges, trends, tools, and case studies, and synthesizing into actionable recommendations for the supervisory community. The professional education and executive education programmes on suptech, data science, and digital transformation have trained hundreds of supervisors to lead product and organisational innovation. The alumni have developed dozens of suptech proofs of concept (PoCs) that have been prototypes and deployed.
The SupTech Launchpad has accelerated and de-risked the collaboration between financial authorities and tech vendors. The Lab gets hands-on in co-creating and executing on detailed technical specifications, global competitions, and lean procurement mechanisms. Through its technical assistance facility, the Lab informs strategy, innovation, modelling, transformation, sustainability, and analytics for suptech solutions. Digital tools like the SupTech Marketplace and Digital SupTech Diagnostic aid financial authorities in identifying and prioritizing solutions.
The Lab also fosters ecosystem acceleration through industry events, hackathons, working groups, and beyond, ensuring the market meets the demand for advanced, responsible suptech applications.
Fii’s Expertise
The Financial Innovation for Impact (Fii) is one of the implementing partners of the Cambridge SupTech Lab, a global, multi-million, multi-year initiative of the Cambridge Judge Business School to accelerate the digital transformation of financial supervision and supervisory agencies.
Through the Lab, global experts have delivered world-class online leadership education, experiential training, ground-breaking research, market intelligence, new analytical frameworks, innovative digital tools, and cutting-edge suptech applications.
Leveraging these ingredients, the Lab empowers supervisors to deploy suptech applications and upgrade their methodologies to address the critical challenges of today’s financial sectors, economies and societies.
