Open for business

The Discursive Diffusion of Regulatory Sandboxes for Fintech Innovation

Bibliographic Data

ID2181950
AuthorsSine Nørholm Just (0000-0002-4179-2708, Roskilde University, corresponding author), Morten Fischer Sivertsen (0000-0002-5978-4626, Roskilde University), Siân Lewin (RegTech Associates, London, UK)
Year2024
Volume17
Issue3
Pages360-378
Publication date2024-05-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Cultural Economy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1753-0350 • E-ISSN: 1753-0369
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17530350.2023.2282131
OpenAlexW4390882668
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited31

Within a timespan of a few years, regulatory sandboxes, a novel initiative for testing fintech innovations, have spread to financial conduct authorities across the world. We study the discursive diffusion of this regulatory innovation as evidence of a broader reconfiguration of relations between the financial sector and its regulators. To do so, we analyse media articles, policy documents, and political speeches, identifying the logics and arguments used to diffuse rhetorical sandboxes. Based on the initial mapping, we detail the anatomy of three national arguments, showing how the underlying rationales for establishing sandboxes are variously reproduced across the contexts of the UK, Singapore, and Denmark. In each case, we find, innovation is posited as a driver of competition, which, in turn, leads to economic growth. Through regulatory sandboxes, financial regulators are becoming actively involved in the promotion of innovation and, hence, continue to rely on and reproduce the exhausted promissory legitimacy of neoliberalism. Whilst appearing to depoliticize the field of finance, the assumption that regulators should be ‘open for business’ is in itself political; as such, we argue, it needs to be approached more critically, which becomes possible by shifting the analytical focus from discursive diffusion to rhetorical struggle

Business · Diffusion · Industrial organization · Thermodynamics · FinTech, Crowdfunding, Digital Finance · Open Source Software Innovations · Private Equity and Venture Capital