The FinTech and InsurTech ecosystem champions the role of the Sandbox as a cornerstone for developing the FinTech ecosystem in Spain, kick-starting innovative projects at the service of citizens.
The Spanish FinTech and InsurTech Association (AEFI for its acronym in Spanish) launched the Sandbox White Paper in 2018, which laid the regulatory foundations that underpin tech development in the financial sector under a new context disrupted by a fresh way of approaching finance to create a fairer, more prosperous society.
AEFI has been working on a national project for innovation from the outset, recruiting talent, attracting investment and positioning Spain as one of the most advanced countries in Europe in the field of financial innovation.
In one of the round tables held during the event, moderated by Jaime Bofill, partner at CMS Albiñana & Suárez de Lezo and AEFI partner, María Dolores Pescador, Executive Chairman of Logalty Group (1st and 2nd cohort), José Luis Orós, CEO of Pensumo (1st cohort), Herminio Fernández, co-founder of Eurocoinpay (3rd cohort) and Yael Hernández, founder of Token City, (4th cohort), offered their experience in actively participating in Sandbox-supervised projects.
These companies agreed that the financial Sandbox is a perfect testing ground where ecosystem companies can gradually and progressively meet the requirements for obtaining an ordinary license, such as capital requirements, solvency, corporate governance, etc., and as a project that serves as an example for other countries in our environment such as France and Germany, although they recognized the need for more government support when it comes to laying the foundations for raising funding to develop these projects following the Sandbox’s pilot period.
In terms of the experience, all the participants described it as “very positive”, although they cautioned that companies that want to participate in the Sandbox should do so “when their project is fully mature and in its final phase, to make the supervisors’ job easier”.
AEFI organised this event four years after the start of the Sandbox approval period as a way to take stock of what the Sandbox has meant for the financial industry; the top representatives of projects that have participated in one of the four cohorts developed by the Sandbox were involved in the event, as well as the supervisors (CNMV, Bank of Spain and the Directorate General of Insurance and Pension Funds), in collaboration with the Madrid City Council, represented at the event by Ángel Niño, Councillor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the Madrid City Council.
