Fintech Meets Legacy Regulatory Systems: What’s Next?

There are a variety of federal and provincial laws and regulatory bodies that were designed to oversee legacy financial intermediaries. That regulatory landscape is changing, keeping the legacy prudential protections that promote solvency and liquidity, while shifting to a framework that is flexible, nimble and focused on market conduct and the consumer. Fintech is at the centre of this change. Financial services are rapidly evolving, es-chewing the dated brick and mortar model in favour of technological adoption, bringing artificial intelligence, blockchains and mobile applications into the mix. This paper examines the regulatory landscape, with a particu-lar focus on anti-money laundering (AML) functions. Who is the regulator? Which regulatory systems are changing and how? Where are the points of harmony and disharmony? How do evolving businesses, like custodial vir-tual currency dealers, and products, like stablecoins, fit in this matrix? The paper concludes that some legacy systems need to be approached adaptively by market participants and governments need to improve on regulatory harmony across Canada.