A Survey of Fintech Research and Policy Discussion

Abstract

The intersection of finance and technology, known as fintech, has resulted in the dramatic growth of innovations and has changed the entire financial landscape. While fintech has a critical role to play in democratizing credit access to the unbanked and thin-file consumers around the globe, those consumers who are currently well served also turn to fintech for faster services and greater transparency. Fintech, particularly the blockchain, has the potential to be disruptive to financial systems and intermediation. Our aim in this paper is to provide a comprehensive fintech literature survey with relevant research studies and policy discussion around the various aspects of fintech. The topics include marketplace and peer-to-peer lending; credit scoring; alternative data; distributed ledger technologies; blockchain; smart contracts; cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings; central bank digital currency; robo-advising; quantitative investment and trading strategies; cybersecurity; identity theft; cloud computing; use of big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning; identity and fraud detection; anti-money laundering; Know Your Customers; natural language processing; regtech; insuretech; sandboxes; and fintech regulations.

Digitization in the Market for Entrepreneurial Finance: Innovative Business Models and New Financing Channels

“…The disruption that digitization is causing to financial intermediation opens a number of key questions on public welfare, financial inclusion, discrimination, cybersecurity, and regulation (Allen et al, 2021;Bollaert et al, 2021;Goldstein et al, 2019). Even if we restrict the analysis to the relatively narrower field of digital entrepreneurial finance, the challenges and opportunities for researchers are enormous.…”

“…While billions of dollars have been invested in the fintech industry around the globe, there are significant gaps in our understanding of their specific role, and of their impact on customers, other entrepreneurial companies, and incumbents, and about what drives their success (Allen et al, 2021;Goldstein et al, 2019). These are critical questions especially in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic that has massively hit the global economy, challenging traditional sources of start-up capital (Howell et al, 2021) but also spurred digitization at an unprecedented rate.…”

Challenges for corporate governance at the national and firm levels

“…This important evidence adds to the empirical body of work on other factors that have been examined in fintech (Allen et al, 2021), crowdfunding (Coakley & Lazos, 2021;Rossi et al, 2021), and initial coin offerings (Philippi et al, 2021). Prior research has not examined how financial literacy ties to the adoption and success of fintech across countries.…”

Expanding corporate finance perspectives to equity crowdfunding

“…Finally, a special issue of the Review of Corporate Finance is dedicated to fintech. Within this special issue, Coakley et al ( 2021b ) provide a comprehensive review of the literature on equity crowdfunding, while Allen et al ( 2021 ) deliver a survey of fintech research and discuss many related policy issues.…”