Smart contracts in the financial sector
1. The digital age and the potential of blockchain. – 2. Market rules and digital dynamism. – 3. The coexistence between traditional regulation and technological innovation. – 4. The partiality of approaches and their temporal scanning of the regulatory phenomenon. – 5. Banking/financial contracts at the test of digitalization. – 6. Regulatory initiatives of the European Union. – 7. Smart contractsfeatures. – 8. The language of smart contracts: the codification of contract clauses. – 9. The critical issues underlying the use of smart contracts. – 10. Disintermediation, financial inclusion, robo-advice, stock options, and derivatives. – 11. Smart contracts in banking services. – 12. Fintech in insurance: automated claims management. – 13. Concluding remarks.
Questo contributo si propone di analizzare i principali effetti della digitalizzazione sulle dinamiche del mercato e le problematiche circa la compatibilità della normativa tradizionale con l’innovazione tecnologica, attraverso una rassegna dei diversi approcci regolatori, nazionali e sovrannazionali.
Nella seconda parte, l’approfondimento è relativo agli smart contract, con una disamina dell’evoluzione del linguaggio contrattuale e di formulazione delle clausole, nonché delle criticità connesse alla semplificazione, realizzazione e automatizzazione dell’accordo contrattuale (con particolare riferimento, ai contratti conclusi tra soggetti non professionali e alla libera accessibilità al nuovo mercato). L’innovazione tecnologica richiede, quindi, di analizzare, in maniera approfondita, la disintermediazione (o “nuova intermediazione”) finanziaria, la robo-advice (la consulenza automatizzata capace di colmare il gap sociale e di accessibilità), il nuovo spazio di c.d. “open banking” (caratterizzato da immediatezza e semplificazione delle operazioni, nonché dalla valutazione algoritmica del merito creditizio) e l’insurtech (con la gestione automatizzata dei sinistri).
This contribution aims to analyze the main effects of digitalization on market dynamics and the problems regarding compatibility of traditional legislation with technological innovation, through a review of the different regulatory approaches, national and european.
In the second part, this deepening concern smart contracts, with an examination of the evolution of contractual language and of wording of contract term, as well as of critical issues related to the simplification, implementation and automation of the contractual agreement (with particular reference to contracts concluded between non-professional subjects and free access to the new market). Therefore technological innovation requires an analysis of financial disintermediation (or "new intermediation"), robo-advice (automated consultancy is able to bridge social and accessibility gap), the new space c.d. "open banking" (characterized by immediacy and simplification of operations, as well as by the algorithmic assessment of creditworthiness) and insurtech (with automated claims management).