We consider the drivers and implications of the growth of "BigTech" in finance - ie the financial services offerings of technology companies with established presence in the market for digital services. BigTech firms often start with payments. Thereafter, some expand into the provision of...

Over 50 countries have introduced regulatory sandboxes to foster financial innovation. This paper conducts the first evaluation of their ability to improve fintechs' access to capital. Exploiting the staggered introduction of the UK sandbox, we compare firms in earlier to those in later cohorts....

Fintech promises to spur financial inclusion and close the gender gap in access to financial services. Using novel survey data for 28 countries, this paper finds a large and ubiquitous ‘fintech gender gap’: while 29% of men use fintech products, only 21% of women do. Country characteristics...

This paper analyses the links between advances in financial technology, investors’ sophistication, and the composition and returns of their financial portfolios. We develop a simple portfolio choice model under asymmetric information and derive some theoretical predictions. Using detailed...

This paper compares the predictive power of credit scoring models based on machine learning techniques with that of traditional loss and default models. Using proprietary transaction-level data from a leading fintech company in China for the period between May and September 2017, we test the...