The Taiwanese Financial Supervisory Commission and the Polish Financial Supervision Authority or KNF signed a co-operative agreement on the subject of financial technology (Fintech) which lays out rules for a referral mechanism, the sharing of information and as-yet-unforseen joint innovation projects.

The agreement enables both regulators to refer startups to their counterparts, to provide 'support' that helps firms in each country get to grips with the regulatory regime in the other, and to share related information on their respective markets and innovations in financial services. The hope is that this will create more opportunities for Fintech businesses from Taiwan and Poland to expand their activities into each other’s markets.

The KNF, established in 2006, has recently been co-ordinating the work of the Special Task Force for Financial Innovation in Poland, which covers a wide range of public institutions (regulatory and supervisory authorities) and market institutions (both supervised and non-supervised). It has also embarked on an 'innovation hub programme' through which it talks to Fintech companies and provides them with help, all the while trying to protect investors.

The FSC, in the meantime, is forging ahead with its own efforts to make Taiwan a FinTech Hub. It has established a 'Fintech Space' and nurtured startups. Moreover, Taiwan's legislature passed the Financial Technology Development and Innovative Experimentation Act at the end of 2017, with some fanfare from the regulators. Mr Willington Koo, the Chairman of the FSC, and Mr Marek Chrzanowski, the Chairman of the KNF, signed on 6th March.

Koo has also just told reporters that he has received enquiries from the Japanese about the setting-up of web-only banks in Taipei, commenting that the FCA is still in the process of drawing up regulations for such enterprises - a task that ought to be over next month. He added, though, that such banks would still have to have minimum paid-up capital of NT$10 million (US$343 million) and would not be absolved from the normal banking rules. Indeed, web-only banks are only going to be allowed to operate under the same licences as physical banks. The interested Japanese companies include Line Corp and Rakuten Inc.