The credit crisis and the tightening of the capital requirements that are applicable to credit institutions, had as a result that the available capital for the real economy dried up as of 2008. New, innovative parties jumped in by filling in the ever-increasing funding demand through non-banking alternative forms of funding. Fueled by technological developments and the possibilities that the internet offers, more and more platform driven business models were developed in which the operator of the digital platform brings supply and demand together without itself retaining assets on its balance sheet. A new form of company had been created: one that the current economy is impossible to imagine without. These developments fit well with the European Commission’s plans to achieve a European Capital Markets Union. This chapter addresses the legal challenges FinTech companies and alternative financiers, such as crowdfunding platforms, face. Hakvoort believes that the European Capital Markets Union only has a chance of succeeding when the rapidly changing financial sector and the market participants that are part of it, are taken into account in a flexible manner. In this chapter, she advocates for clarification at the level of the European Commission or the European Supervisory Authorities in regard to the way in which financial-return based crowdfunding should be treated from a supervisory perspective within the EEA. You can find the chapter here.
