The UK's Financial Conduct Authority has licensed another 29 IT start-ups to provide 'guinea pig' customers with financial services while having to obey only some of its rules.

The FCA allows such a temporary relaxation of its 'investor-protection' and other rules as part of an initiative that it calls "the regulatory sandbox." Its latest announcement on the subject is rather uninformative, stating that this initiative allows firms to test innovative products, services or business models in a live market environment while ensuring that appropriate 'protections' are in place - a perfect description of a normal regulated firm going about its normal business while obeying normal rules.

This new batch of firms (or 'cohort,' as the FCA calls it, borrowing a sociological term) is less interesting for our publication than the last because it contains some propositions aimed at people on lower incomes and more wholesale start-ups, although the latter include firms which might be of interest to HNW investors and their wealth managers because they want to make the capital-raising process more efficient. About 40% of them rely heavily on distributed ledger technology and some firms are experimenting with crypto-assets. Geo-location technology, Application Programming Interfaces and artificial intelligence are all represented here. The firms' names (with one wishing to remain anonymous) are as follows.

• BlockEx;
• Capexmove;
• Chasing Returns;
• Community First Credit Union;
• Creativity Software;
• CreditSCRIPT;
• Dashly;
• Etherisc;
• Fineqia;
• Fractal;
• Globacap;
• Hub85;
• London Media Exchange;
• Meet Mia;
• Mettle;
• Mortgage Kart;
• Multiply;
• Natwest;
• NorthRow;
• Salary Finance;
• TokenMarket;
• Tokencard;
• Universal Tokens;
• Veridu Labs;
• World Reserve Trust;
• Zippen;
• 1825 (part of the Standard Life group);
• 20/30.

The regulator will start taking applications for the next cohort of the "regulatory sandbox" later this year. The reason for this mysterious name is unknown, but it seems safe to say that someone at the FCA likes cats.

APIs, API, DLT, party hearty!