Most commentators agree Canada and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) have many of the elements required to support a vibrant FinTech ecosystem, notably a stable and secure financial system, a high-concentration of financial institutions, access to a large pool of talented employees, and high-living standards. But a key shortcoming is the absence of a clearly defined FinTech strategy championed by government and other FinTech stakeholders. As stated in the 2015 Munk report on the Current State of the Financial Technology Innovation Ecosystem in the Toronto Region, “Most successful ecosystems are the result of critical interventions by key actors and local leaders, often within the context of a supportive policy environment, but rarely led exclusively by public sector actors”. According to these authors, Canada’s key challenge is to develop a vision of the interventions needed to cultivate and support the FinTech ecosystem and to develop a strategy for what each stakeholder group can do to address them.
On November 30th, 2016, Prof Michael King, Co-Director of the Scotiabank Digital Banking Lab, and Amelia (Amy) Young of Upside Consulting convened a meeting of 18 FinTech stakeholders to begin a dialogue around the key elements of a FinTech strategy for Canada. The meeting participants included: federal and provincial government officials and regulators; representatives from the Big 5 banks plus Power Financial; and executives from the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, the MaRS FinTech Cluster, the Information Technology Association of Canada, Payments Canada, and several universities (Western University, University of Toronto).
In the "Towards a FinTech Strategy for Canada - Background Briefing", King and Young outlined the key elements of the national FinTech strategies adopted in United Kingdom and Australia before summarizing the views on Canada’s FinTech ecosystem from a variety of articles and reports.
This group will continue to hold consultations, while King and Young will hold focus groups with FinTech start-ups in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. If you would like to be consulted on this topic, please email the authors directly at mking@ivey.ca and amelia@upsideconsulting.com with the title “Towards a FinTech Strategy for Canada” in the subject line.