The Trump administration has announced a White House innovation office that will focus on modernizing technology of federal government departments; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will oversee the innovation office; private sector technology executive advisors to the innovation office include Tim Cook from Apple and Bill Gates from Microsoft. Source
Pepper Hamilton provides details on their recent podcast and webinar in their featured blog post; the firm's January 5 podcast provided insight on what the Donald Trump presidency means for the financial services industry; on January 24 the firm provided a webinar on factors for considering the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's new fintech charter. Sponsored Blog Post
There was a surprising announcement from the presidential campaign of Donald Trump this morning. Sources inside the campaign revealed that...
The market has currently slowed gains as speculators await more details on Trump administration policies; the Justice Department has taken its stance on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's appeals court hearing in May and it seems the next big announcement from the Trump administration regarding fintech is the appointment of the next comptroller; at LendIt USA 2017 Amias Gerety gave some insight on how the Trump administration views fintech and current themes in government fintech debates. Source
One of the last actions of the Obama administration this week was to release a policy framework for fintech. This was a follow up from the White House Fintech Summit in June 2016 where many of the leading fintech companies gathered in Washington for a day of presentations and roundtable discussions. The paper provides a framework with ten principles that policymakers and regulators can use to think about and engage with the fintech ecosystem. Given today is the inauguration day for a new administration we won't know if these principles will be carried through but we do hope the Trump White House will make fintech innovation a priority. Source
President Trump is renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and fintech is a part of the discussions; President Donald Trump requested the renegotiation with a key focus on US workers; Vanessa Rubio, undersecretary of Mexico's finance ministry, told Reuters that discussions on financial services have also been important and said, "We are not yet sure what will end up in the text of the new agreement, but we are sure that we need to have a discussion about new services, above all about the fintech industry." Source
American Banker speculates on what President-elect Donald Trump will do with the CFPB, which has enhanced consumer financial protections in recent years; Trump has not been definitive but rather generally against current levels of financial regulation; in October, the US Court of Appeals for DC found that the CFPB's director could be unilaterally replaced by the US President; the agency has until November 25 to appeal; if they should lose the appeal, the publication poses options for the incoming President of (a) pressuring current Director Cordray to resign then replacing him with someone who will drop the legal appeal, or (b) have Republican lawmakers in the next congressional session replace the single director oversight with a five-member commission and subject the CFPB to Congressional appropriations review. Source
The financial markets were slightly surprised by the presidential outcome with Dow futures down approximately 250 points on Wednesday morning; uncertainty over some big changes specifically in financial services from Donald Trump will be a factor for markets and the industry going forward; in financial services Trump looks to deregulate the industry easing many of the controls implemented by Dodd-Frank; another factor for fintech will be Trump's position on net neutrality which could limit open source internet development; overall, speculators see increased volatility and uncertainty for the near-term. Source