Falling for FinTech?: A Historical Institutionalist Account of France’s Approach to Financial Innovation After the Global Financial Crisis

This book presents a unique in-depth case study, supported by interviews with French experts, of France’s early embrace and regulatory leadership on FinTech in an uncertain EU post-2008 crisis regulatory context, with an extension of the discussion to implications on EU level. FinTech- the recent wave of technological innovation in finance – is no longer a buzzword but a mainstream development in financial services. Although it raises much hope, FinTech creates challenges to post-global financial crisis regulation which raises an important research question at the heart of this book: How do financial regulators manage uncertain technological innovations in the wake of a protracted systemic crisis? This book analyzes this critical question for political economy and public policy through a qualitative in-depth analysis of FinTech regulation in France, a country where the State has promoted financial innovation as a matter of industrial policy within an evolving regulatory space, supported generally by market-shaping principles.