Hogan Lovells Launches Global FinTech Mentors Program at Innovate Finance Global Summit.

Lagos, Nigeria, 10^th April 2017: Hogan Lovells has launched a Global FinTech Mentors Program, through which its most experienced Financial Services and Regulatory partners will guide FinTech organizations, at any stage of development, through their FinTech journey.

FinTech mentors will be available to organizations in the UK, U.S., Germany and Hong Kong, with mentors forging ongoing relationships with FinTechs and providing invaluable commercial insight on how financial services businesses can successfully launch, expand and improve their products

The program will also provide access to the firm’s FinTech network, leveraging its Strategic Partnership with Innovate Finance; providing complimentary legal and compliance training and access to a host of industry events; as well as use of the bespoke Regulatory Accelerator tool launched last year, and other new FinTech tools due to launch later this year.

FinTech partner and Head of Hogan Lovells Financial Institutions Sector, Rachel Kent, said: “It is great for the industry that so many law firms are offering support to FinTechs. What we offer is more than just legal advice, we help start-ups to integrate themselves into the FinTech ecosystem and to fulfil their objective of bringing their product to market. Our FinTech Mentors Program will allow us to share our extensive industry knowledge with a new breed of financial services companies and to help them to launch, expand across borders and to be successful.”

In 2016 the firm’s Global FinTech group worked with over 40 start-ups and momentum players such as Brolly, Habito, KREDITECH, Landbay, Salary Finance, Tide and Zopa, providing legal and commercial advice to help move their businesses forward including on accessing the FCA’s Regulatory Sandbox.

Commenting on Hogan Lovells’ support, Rene Griemens, CFO of KREDITECH, said: “Hogan Lovells helped us at an earlier stage of our history to structure our regulatory setting worldwide. He is particularly experienced in talking with the regulator which helped us to understand what is important and to find our position in the lending market. They knew the issues and provided solutions, exactly what a growing company needs.”

Hogan Lovells has a history of innovating precedent, setting legal and regulatory solutions, includingadvising on market firsts such as: the establishment of the UK’s first internet bank; the launch of Zopa – the world’s first peer-to-peer lender of its type; the launch of a mobile P2P payments service – the first of its kind in the UK market; and are currently advising on payments use cases using blockchain.

At the forefront of market developments in FinTech, in 2016 Hogan Lovells led debate in the industry, including through Innovate Finance’s Industry Sandbox Steering Committee and Transatlantic Policy Working Group and hosting events and roundtables, in particular relating to Women in FinTech among others.

The firm continues to lead the way on key issues including PSD2, open banking and Brexit, and will publish further reports in the UK and U.S. exploring regulation of the blockchain and the integration of RegTech into the U.S. financial regulatory system. Also launching in 2017 will be a suite of new online tools for established institutions,FinTechs and start-ups.