The Financial Conduct Authority and the City of London Corporation have called in Fintech Sandpit to help build a digital sandbox.
The sandbox, in pilot, is already being used by members of the country's financial services industry to work on issues that have been exacerbated by Covid-19, including fraud prevention, improving the financial resilience of vulnerable consumers, and increasing access to finance for SMEs.
Sandbox users get to test their offerings with huge data sets, including 400 million transactional banking records, SME lending data based on 600,000 SMEs and a 10% sample of the UK population.
The box also includes an open API marketplace, where digital service providers list and provide access to services via APIs in a standardised and secure manner. Meanwhile, users can tap collaboration features to connect with each other, while an observation deck lets regulators and other interested parties observe in-flight testing at a technical level.
Matt Allan, founder, Fintech Sandpit, says: "It speaks volumes of the need for digital transformation when what’s widely regarded as the world’s most progressive regulator in the Fintech capital of the World wants to partner to support the industry and its customers."
Another vendor, Solidatus, is providing its modelling software for pilot participants to view the structure of synthetic data within the sandbox and its interrelated properties, making it easy for them to find the information they require.