David Durand, Advisor, Innovation and Advocacy
September 9th, 2020
David Durand, LL.L., B.Sc. chem., – Founder and Managing Partner of Durand Lawyers – Lawyer (Québec)[...]
UK Government Ups Crowdfunding without Prospectus to €8 Million – Matching Germany
Crowdfund Insider | | Jul 2, 2018
In a significant policy move by the UK government, the threshold for investment crowdfunding has been upped to €8 million thus matching the recent change by Germany which announced the same funding limit. This increase is due to a change in the Prospectus Directive.
In the UK, there is no limit on how much a crowdfunding platform may raise online. But a rule requiring a full blown prospectus at €5 million has, in effect, created a significant speed bump for investment crowdfunding platforms – one that has rarely been breached due to the cost of creating and complying with a prospectus requirement.
The change announced today, should have an important impact on UK crowdfunding platforms as it will help make the online capital formation industry far more viable as issuers seek larger funding amounts raised via the issuance of securities online. In the early days of UK crowdfunding most issuers raised smaller seed round amounts. Today, issuers span a far wider range of funding requirements from seed stage to scale up. Frequently, these offerings are done in partnership with professional investors such as VCs or experienced angels.
See:
-
Competition Bureau weighs in on fintech: urgent action required
-
NCFA Canada’s submission to Finance Canada (March 2018): Urgent Need for Regulatory Change and Government Support
The industry leadership organization, the UK Crowdfunding Association (UKCFA), welcomed the UK government’s decision to change the rule – a change that becomes actionable almost immediately – on July 21st.
Investment crowdfunding platforms, both debt and equity, have been increasing the scale and scope of investment offers with many platforms already consistently raising the maximum €5 million for SME’s and infrastructure projects in the UK. The extension is said to enable a new age of crowdfunding for larger businesses and tackle more significant infrastructure projects in a diverse sector of industry.
A spokesperson for the UKCFA shared a statement with CI:
“Our members are already working now on investment offers which could take advantage of this opportunity for larger, more efficient capital raising through investment based crowdfunding without compromising on levels of due diligence. The economics of the previous threshold no longer added up, creating a distortion in the market which has now been addressed. This means that a new sector of ‘scale up’ businesses will be able to benefit from the option of choosing crowdfunding as a route to funding their growth and success. It also helps maintain the UK’s competitive position as a great place to start and scale a business.”
Continue to the full article --> here
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Ontario Capital Markets Modernization Committee | Walied Soliman Taskforce Chair | Jan 22, 2021 Job creation and economic prosperity. Fundamentally, these are the most important outputs of a successful capital markets regime. Ontario first enacted its capital markets laws in 1928. For decades, Ontario has been at the forefront of investor protection and market efficacy. We cannot fall behind. Late last year, former Minister Rod Phillips formed the Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce to review the current status of Ontario’s capital markets. By February 2020, Rupert Duchesne, Wes Hall, Melissa Kennedy, Cindy Tripp, and I were appointed to conduct this review. Since the financial crisis in 2008, the global financial system has undergone significant changes. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to be adaptive and forward-looking in developing a modernized capital markets. The Taskforce aimed to address the issues of tomorrow’s capital markets with bold and innovative recommendations that will make Ontario one of the most attractive capital market destinations globally. See: Ontario’s Capital Markets Modernization Task force report draws criticism CSA Provide Comments on the Ontario Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce Consultation Report The Taskforce worked diligently for ten months, through the COVID-19 pandemic. We met over 110 different stakeholders ...
Read More
Hardbacon | Julien Brault | Jan 15, 2021 In my time as a business reporter, I was at the forefront during the decline of the country's 2000s tech giant, BlackBerry. BlackBerry launched its mobile app store in 2009, a year after Apple launched the App Store. Everyone knows the rest of the story. See: NCFA OpEd: Canada’s Open Banking Consultations: Let’s Get it Done! While BlackBerry executives praised themselves for having better sound quality and a more efficient keyboard, what people wanted when they bought a smartphone were apps. Today, the Canadian banks are making the same mistake by refusing to put control of financial data back into the hands of their users, as the European banks are already doing. In fact, since September 14, 2019, European open banking regulations (PSD2) force banks to allow their customers to share their data with third parties according to a standardized protocol. In other words, their customers can choose to share their bank information with an online loan app or even with a budgeting app. In Canada, the federal government created the Advisory Committee on Open Banking in 2018, which delivered its first report in 2020, which was very favorable to open banking ...
Read More
Fintech Confidential | Michael King and Richard Nesbitt | Jan 21, 2021 In our recently published book The Technological Revolution in Financial Services: How Banks, Fintechs, and Customers Win Together, a group of expert contributors from North America and Europe share their insights on how the financial services industry will evolve in the coming decade. The context is the ongoing transformation in the financial services industry, which is being driven by three structural forces: heightened regulation that followed the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), innovation fueled by new technologies and entrepreneurial fintech startups, and demographic trends with the rise of millennials and the retirement of baby boomers. These forces are changing the competitive landscape of financial services, lowering barriers to entry and increasing competition from both inside and outside the industry. Our book outlines what we see as the successful strategies for financial technology (fintech) companies and incumbents, namely banks, insurance companies, and asset managers. While there is much to learn from our contributors, this article shares our main conclusion and a few key takeaways. We argue that the winning strategy for the coming decade will be for banks, insurance companies and asset managers to partner with fintech startups to ...
Read More
NCFA | Jan 21, 2021 The OSC has recently announced a Charter for a new Office of Economic Growth & Innovation (Innovation Office): release and innovation office charter. The NCFA welcomes the announcement but remains skeptical. Is this really a "new model" or merely window dressing 1. An Innovation Office alone will not make the OSC more "innovative". Innovation requires a lot more than a mere reference to these words. The Charter points towards "fostering a culture that encourages experimentation, embraces failures as necessary learning steps and allows for a quick pivot to the next idea" and playing a role in the "OSC’s ongoing modernization, which includes adopting a more flexible regulatory approach, making investments in technology and simplifying our rules and processes". Do the OSC leaders (and the Ontario Government) understand how difficult this essential culture change will be? What does "modernize how we formulate policy and new regulations" mean? Does it involve, for example, more disciplined decision making, better analysis and use of data (including collecting or enabling much better capital markets data generally in Canada), extensive staff training, learning to better manage risk? We need more information so that industry participants can have greater comfort about what ...
Read More
Guest Post | Jan 20, 2021 If you’re new to the world of investing in cryptocurrencies, you might have heard of stablecoins. These are physically-backed assets that differ quite a bit from Bitcoin and other coins. If you’ve heard of them, you’re understandably curious as to what they’re about. This guide can help you with that. How are Stablecoins Different from Bitcoin? As mentioned, stablecoins are tied to a physical asset. Bitcoin is not. It has its own value backed by the electricity that goes into mining it. Stablecoins like Tether or TrueUSD are tied to the value of the US dollar. These are sold on most traditional exchanges. Otherwise, there are also precious metal-backed stablecoins. Coins like these are more often sold on dedicated platforms like Gold Exchange. Now, you can probably infer that because stablecoins are tied to the value of physical assets, their value is inherently less volatile than Bitcoin. As you may know, Bitcoin can (and has) risen or fallen thousands of dollars at any given moment. That volatility might be a boon for some experienced investors, but newer ones might want to avoid them. This is where stablecoins come into play. Stablecoins like SilverCoin allow ...
Read More
Bain and Company | By Mike Kühnel, Thomas Olsen, John Fildes and Karl Gridl | Dec 16, 2020 Despite decades of technological advances, global capital markets remain characterized by fragmented and siloed networks, with limited interoperability between them. Reconciliation between systems requires extra, sometimes manual, steps. Many processes across the financial ecosystem thus continue to be prone to error and high costs. This applies to public markets but even more acutely to private markets. See: 3 Ways Digital Assets Will Reshape The World As a consequence, a consensus across the global financial ecosystem has emerged: Digitized financial assets and distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms will substantially improve transparency of information, automation, distribution and, ultimately, liquidity. Adoption of digital assets—assets and regulated financial securities that are represented digitally and administered on digital platforms—will expand beyond the first niche application of cryptocurrencies, with DLT removing many sources of inefficiency. Exchanges, banks, technology companies and other financial market firms will need to make decisions soon about how to participate, as it takes time to build an economically attractive business model and the required capabilities and partnerships. Postponing this decision comes with the risk of losing strategic position as early movers gain share and ...
Read More
Crowdfund Insider | Steven Knipfelberg | Jan 19, 2021 Why are smart contracts significant? Traditionally, parties have relied on intermediaries, such as escrow agents, banks, or governments, to ensure the performance of a contract (or that a party didn’t simply run off with your cash). Smart contracts eliminate the role of intermediaries because they are both self-executing and self-enforcing. The entire transaction is dictated by computer code alone. By cutting out the “middleman,” transaction fees are dramatically reduced, while transaction speed is dramatically increased. Parties can now make a wide variety of agreements without fear that the agreement will be dishonored. See: The UK Provides Legal Certainty For Smart Contracts And Cryptoassets In Its Landmark Legal Statement Blockchain-based smart contracts are quickly becoming a common method of transacting. Since 2018, private parties have increasingly used smart contracts to tokenize assets and execute the terms of commercial loans and securities lending transactions, such as “repo” swaps of U.S. Treasury bonds. In the near future, smart contracts may be used in an even greater variety of transactions involving international trade finance, derivatives markets, mortgages, and auto leasing. With their ability to instantaneously execute and settle transactions, smart contracts have the potential to ...
Read More
KABN | Cara Buckspan | Jan 19, 2021 Access to up to 2,000 US Colleges and Universities with reach of up to 1.5 Million Students TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 19, 2021 / KABN Systems NA Holdings Corp. (CSE:KABN)(OTC PINK:TRWRF)(FRA:4T51) (the "Company", "KABN North America" or "KABN NA"), a North American Fintech solutions company specializing in empowering individuals to manage, control and generate value from their biometrically-verified Self Sovereign Identity ("SSI") through its Liquid Avatar platform, announces today that it has entered into an agreement to partner with US based, The Campus Agency to create innovative engagement programs for Liquid Avatar to reach the US college and university student, alumni and family market. KABN NA and The Campus Agency will be working together to engage micro-influencers, develop and launch innovative engagement and Augmented Reality programs to introduce the college and university market to the Liquid Avatar and KABN value programs. The partnership goals are to increase brand awareness, maximize engagement, educate users on the value proposition of Self Sovereign Identity, and generate user benefits and revenue for the partnership program. See: Law reform to move identity verification online Digital IDs Help Open Banking Reach Its Fullest Potential With reach ...
Read More
FinCEN | Release | Jan 14, 2021 WASHINGTON—The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced today it is reopening the comment period for its recent proposed rulemaking regarding certain transactions involving convertible virtual currency (CVC) or digital assets with legal tender status (LTDA). Under the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), banks and money services businesses (MSBs) would be required to submit reports, keep records, and verify the identity of customers in relation to transactions above certain thresholds involving CVC/LTDA wallets not hosted by a financial institution (also known as “unhosted wallets”) or CVC/LTDA wallets hosted by a financial institution in certain jurisdictions identified by FinCEN. See: Hester Peirce Says SEC Enforcement is Not the Way to Provide Crypto Clarity Today’s Notice identifies additional statutory authority for the proposed rule under the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, provides additional information regarding the reporting form, and reopens the comment period for the proposal. Specifically, FinCEN is providing an additional 15 days for comments on the proposed reporting requirements regarding information on CVC or LTDA transactions greater than $10,000, or aggregating to greater than $10,000, that involve unhosted wallets or wallets hosted in jurisdictions identified by FinCEN. FinCEN is providing an additional 45 days ...
Read More
Financial Times | OpEd by Brian Brooks | Jan 12, 2021 Lenders run by algorithms and blockchain technology will require 21st century regulation The writer is the US acting comptroller of the currency In 1961, Popular Science magazine envisioned self-driving cars. The reality arrived sooner than anyone anticipated, and before safety regulators could adapt. Most automotive laws — on speed limits, giving signals, drink-driving — had been designed to protect against dangerous drivers, not dangerous cars. Autonomous vehicles brought new risks that legacy rules never considered. As one headline on the Wired website put it: “Who’s Regulating Self-Driving Cars? Often, No One”. Banking is headed down the same road. And it’s being driven by the technology behind decentralised finance, or DeFi. But just as the original rules of the road protected us from other drivers, so our current bank regulations exist mainly to prevent human failings. See: Intro to yield farming and the latest developments in DeFi At the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, we require every bank to have officers responsible for its safety — such as a chief risk officer and a chief audit executive. We limit how much banks can lend to their directors ...
Read More
Ontario Capital Markets Modernization Committee | Walied Soliman Taskforce Chair | Jan 22, 2021 Job creation and economic prosperity. Fundamentally, these are the most important outputs of a successful capital markets regime. Ontario first enacted its capital markets laws in 1928. For decades, Ontario has been at the forefront of investor protection and market efficacy. We cannot fall behind. Late last year, former Minister Rod Phillips formed the Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce to review the current status of Ontario’s capital markets. By February 2020, Rupert Duchesne, Wes Hall, Melissa Kennedy, Cindy Tripp, and I were appointed to conduct this review. Since the financial crisis in 2008, the global financial system has undergone significant changes. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to be adaptive and forward-looking in developing a modernized capital markets. The Taskforce aimed to address the issues of tomorrow’s capital markets with bold and innovative recommendations that will make Ontario one of the most attractive capital market destinations globally. See: Ontario’s Capital Markets Modernization Task force report draws criticism CSA Provide Comments on the Ontario Capital Markets Modernization Taskforce Consultation Report The Taskforce worked diligently for ten months, through the COVID-19 pandemic. We met over 110 different stakeholders ...
Read More
Read More
Hardbacon | Julien Brault | Jan 15, 2021 In my time as a business reporter, I was at the forefront during the decline of the country's 2000s tech giant, BlackBerry. BlackBerry launched its mobile app store in 2009, a year after Apple launched the App Store. Everyone knows the rest of the story. See: NCFA OpEd: Canada’s Open Banking Consultations: Let’s Get it Done! While BlackBerry executives praised themselves for having better sound quality and a more efficient keyboard, what people wanted when they bought a smartphone were apps. Today, the Canadian banks are making the same mistake by refusing to put control of financial data back into the hands of their users, as the European banks are already doing. In fact, since September 14, 2019, European open banking regulations (PSD2) force banks to allow their customers to share their data with third parties according to a standardized protocol. In other words, their customers can choose to share their bank information with an online loan app or even with a budgeting app. In Canada, the federal government created the Advisory Committee on Open Banking in 2018, which delivered its first report in 2020, which was very favorable to open banking ...
Read More
Read More
Fintech Confidential | Michael King and Richard Nesbitt | Jan 21, 2021 In our recently published book The Technological Revolution in Financial Services: How Banks, Fintechs, and Customers Win Together, a group of expert contributors from North America and Europe share their insights on how the financial services industry will evolve in the coming decade. The context is the ongoing transformation in the financial services industry, which is being driven by three structural forces: heightened regulation that followed the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC), innovation fueled by new technologies and entrepreneurial fintech startups, and demographic trends with the rise of millennials and the retirement of baby boomers. These forces are changing the competitive landscape of financial services, lowering barriers to entry and increasing competition from both inside and outside the industry. Our book outlines what we see as the successful strategies for financial technology (fintech) companies and incumbents, namely banks, insurance companies, and asset managers. While there is much to learn from our contributors, this article shares our main conclusion and a few key takeaways. We argue that the winning strategy for the coming decade will be for banks, insurance companies and asset managers to partner with fintech startups to ...
Read More
Read More
NCFA | Jan 21, 2021 The OSC has recently announced a Charter for a new Office of Economic Growth & Innovation (Innovation Office): release and innovation office charter. The NCFA welcomes the announcement but remains skeptical. Is this really a "new model" or merely window dressing 1. An Innovation Office alone will not make the OSC more "innovative". Innovation requires a lot more than a mere reference to these words. The Charter points towards "fostering a culture that encourages experimentation, embraces failures as necessary learning steps and allows for a quick pivot to the next idea" and playing a role in the "OSC’s ongoing modernization, which includes adopting a more flexible regulatory approach, making investments in technology and simplifying our rules and processes". Do the OSC leaders (and the Ontario Government) understand how difficult this essential culture change will be? What does "modernize how we formulate policy and new regulations" mean? Does it involve, for example, more disciplined decision making, better analysis and use of data (including collecting or enabling much better capital markets data generally in Canada), extensive staff training, learning to better manage risk? We need more information so that industry participants can have greater comfort about what ...
Read More
Read More
Guest Post | Jan 20, 2021 If you’re new to the world of investing in cryptocurrencies, you might have heard of stablecoins. These are physically-backed assets that differ quite a bit from Bitcoin and other coins. If you’ve heard of them, you’re understandably curious as to what they’re about. This guide can help you with that. How are Stablecoins Different from Bitcoin? As mentioned, stablecoins are tied to a physical asset. Bitcoin is not. It has its own value backed by the electricity that goes into mining it. Stablecoins like Tether or TrueUSD are tied to the value of the US dollar. These are sold on most traditional exchanges. Otherwise, there are also precious metal-backed stablecoins. Coins like these are more often sold on dedicated platforms like Gold Exchange. Now, you can probably infer that because stablecoins are tied to the value of physical assets, their value is inherently less volatile than Bitcoin. As you may know, Bitcoin can (and has) risen or fallen thousands of dollars at any given moment. That volatility might be a boon for some experienced investors, but newer ones might want to avoid them. This is where stablecoins come into play. Stablecoins like SilverCoin allow ...
Read More
Read More
Bain and Company | By Mike Kühnel, Thomas Olsen, John Fildes and Karl Gridl | Dec 16, 2020 Despite decades of technological advances, global capital markets remain characterized by fragmented and siloed networks, with limited interoperability between them. Reconciliation between systems requires extra, sometimes manual, steps. Many processes across the financial ecosystem thus continue to be prone to error and high costs. This applies to public markets but even more acutely to private markets. See: 3 Ways Digital Assets Will Reshape The World As a consequence, a consensus across the global financial ecosystem has emerged: Digitized financial assets and distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms will substantially improve transparency of information, automation, distribution and, ultimately, liquidity. Adoption of digital assets—assets and regulated financial securities that are represented digitally and administered on digital platforms—will expand beyond the first niche application of cryptocurrencies, with DLT removing many sources of inefficiency. Exchanges, banks, technology companies and other financial market firms will need to make decisions soon about how to participate, as it takes time to build an economically attractive business model and the required capabilities and partnerships. Postponing this decision comes with the risk of losing strategic position as early movers gain share and ...
Read More
Read More
Crowdfund Insider | Steven Knipfelberg | Jan 19, 2021 Why are smart contracts significant? Traditionally, parties have relied on intermediaries, such as escrow agents, banks, or governments, to ensure the performance of a contract (or that a party didn’t simply run off with your cash). Smart contracts eliminate the role of intermediaries because they are both self-executing and self-enforcing. The entire transaction is dictated by computer code alone. By cutting out the “middleman,” transaction fees are dramatically reduced, while transaction speed is dramatically increased. Parties can now make a wide variety of agreements without fear that the agreement will be dishonored. See: The UK Provides Legal Certainty For Smart Contracts And Cryptoassets In Its Landmark Legal Statement Blockchain-based smart contracts are quickly becoming a common method of transacting. Since 2018, private parties have increasingly used smart contracts to tokenize assets and execute the terms of commercial loans and securities lending transactions, such as “repo” swaps of U.S. Treasury bonds. In the near future, smart contracts may be used in an even greater variety of transactions involving international trade finance, derivatives markets, mortgages, and auto leasing. With their ability to instantaneously execute and settle transactions, smart contracts have the potential to ...
Read More
Read More
KABN | Cara Buckspan | Jan 19, 2021 Access to up to 2,000 US Colleges and Universities with reach of up to 1.5 Million Students TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 19, 2021 / KABN Systems NA Holdings Corp. (CSE:KABN)(OTC PINK:TRWRF)(FRA:4T51) (the "Company", "KABN North America" or "KABN NA"), a North American Fintech solutions company specializing in empowering individuals to manage, control and generate value from their biometrically-verified Self Sovereign Identity ("SSI") through its Liquid Avatar platform, announces today that it has entered into an agreement to partner with US based, The Campus Agency to create innovative engagement programs for Liquid Avatar to reach the US college and university student, alumni and family market. KABN NA and The Campus Agency will be working together to engage micro-influencers, develop and launch innovative engagement and Augmented Reality programs to introduce the college and university market to the Liquid Avatar and KABN value programs. The partnership goals are to increase brand awareness, maximize engagement, educate users on the value proposition of Self Sovereign Identity, and generate user benefits and revenue for the partnership program. See: Law reform to move identity verification online Digital IDs Help Open Banking Reach Its Fullest Potential With reach ...
Read More
Read More
FinCEN | Release | Jan 14, 2021 WASHINGTON—The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced today it is reopening the comment period for its recent proposed rulemaking regarding certain transactions involving convertible virtual currency (CVC) or digital assets with legal tender status (LTDA). Under the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), banks and money services businesses (MSBs) would be required to submit reports, keep records, and verify the identity of customers in relation to transactions above certain thresholds involving CVC/LTDA wallets not hosted by a financial institution (also known as “unhosted wallets”) or CVC/LTDA wallets hosted by a financial institution in certain jurisdictions identified by FinCEN. See: Hester Peirce Says SEC Enforcement is Not the Way to Provide Crypto Clarity Today’s Notice identifies additional statutory authority for the proposed rule under the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, provides additional information regarding the reporting form, and reopens the comment period for the proposal. Specifically, FinCEN is providing an additional 15 days for comments on the proposed reporting requirements regarding information on CVC or LTDA transactions greater than $10,000, or aggregating to greater than $10,000, that involve unhosted wallets or wallets hosted in jurisdictions identified by FinCEN. FinCEN is providing an additional 45 days ...
Read More
Read More
Financial Times | OpEd by Brian Brooks | Jan 12, 2021 Lenders run by algorithms and blockchain technology will require 21st century regulation The writer is the US acting comptroller of the currency In 1961, Popular Science magazine envisioned self-driving cars. The reality arrived sooner than anyone anticipated, and before safety regulators could adapt. Most automotive laws — on speed limits, giving signals, drink-driving — had been designed to protect against dangerous drivers, not dangerous cars. Autonomous vehicles brought new risks that legacy rules never considered. As one headline on the Wired website put it: “Who’s Regulating Self-Driving Cars? Often, No One”. Banking is headed down the same road. And it’s being driven by the technology behind decentralised finance, or DeFi. But just as the original rules of the road protected us from other drivers, so our current bank regulations exist mainly to prevent human failings. See: Intro to yield farming and the latest developments in DeFi At the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, we require every bank to have officers responsible for its safety — such as a chief risk officer and a chief audit executive. We limit how much banks can lend to their directors ...
Read More
Read More
The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada non-profit actively engaged with cryptocurrency, blockchain, crowdfunding, alternative finance, fintech, P2P, ICO, STO, and online investing stakeholders globally. NCFA Canada provides education, research, industry stewardship, services, and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers and works closely with industry, government, academia, community and eco-system partners and affiliates to create a strong and vibrant crowdfunding and fintech industry. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: ncfacanada.org
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