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FinTech in Latvia: Status Quo, Current Developments and Challenges Ahead
Version 1
: Received: 10 August 2021 / Approved: 11 August 2021 / Online: 11 August 2021 (15:32:52 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Rupeika-Apoga, R.; Wendt, S. FinTech in Latvia: Status Quo, Current Developments, and Challenges Ahead. Risks 2021, 9, 181. Rupeika-Apoga, R.; Wendt, S. FinTech in Latvia: Status Quo, Current Developments, and Challenges Ahead. Risks 2021, 9, 181.
Abstract
FinTech has been in the focus of the discussion for quite some time. However, the market share of FinTech companies is still relatively small in compared to more traditional financial services. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the status quo, current developments and challenges ahead for the Latvian FinTech sector. We combine three analyses: the political and legal, the economic, the social and the technological environment (PEST) analysis, an analysis of the size and performance of FinTech companies during the last 10 years, and a survey among FinTech companies. We find that the current status of regulation is one of the main obstacles to FinTech development, because it does not sufficiently consider FinTech-specific aspects. Problems in attracting skilled workforce, and an environment that is not very supportive of new developments in finance are further challenges and might explain at least part of the growth and performance difficulties. A revision, modernization and harmonization of regulation is essential to create a level playing field for all market participants: FinTech companies, traditional financial service providers and those originally traditional players that are integrating FinTech solutions in their business model. Further efforts are also required to foster the Latvia’s attractiveness for skilled workforce. We hope that this study helps increase the visibility of Latvian FinTech and contributes to the development of the new Latvian FinTech strategy.
Keywords
FinTech; Financial markets; PEST analysis; Survey analysis
Subject
Business, Economics and Management, Finance
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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