U.K. firm to offer real-time regulation on Korean fintech

ENTIQ, a U.K.-based accelerator and incubator, vowed to bring some of the state-of-the-art financial technologies, including real-time regulation technologies, to Korea for its prospective financial technology market.

“Real-time regulation is an emerging technology and regulatory field that we are exploring,” said Eric Van Der Kleij, the 54-year-old cofounder and managing director of ENTIQ, at a media conference in Seoul on Tuesday.

ENTIQ is a global innovation specialist that builds new ventures and accelerates emerging technologies and innovation programs, including fintech.

Van Der Kleij will step down from Level39, a brand of ENTIQ, and return to ENTIQ full-time to focus on the firm’s growth opportunities, such as in South Korea and ENTIQ’s fintech Lab. The ENTIQ Lab is doing work for a number of clients including a major European clearinghouse that is currently transacting in 1 trillion euro ($1.13 trillion).

The South African-born technology entrepreneur viewed Korea could catch both hares of transparency and a freer financial market with advanced financial technology.

Van Der Kleij picked “block chain,” an online ledger system that can trace all transaction data, as the future solution to the real-time regulation in Korea.

“If the bank has a ledger that is built on a block chain and the regulator has a copy of that ledger, then there can be no manipulation, because the truth is immediately on it (the block chain). It is real-time regulation.”

Yet the commercialization of real-time regulation technology and solutions will need more time, according to Jae-won Peter Chun, the senior development executive of ENTIQ.

Real-time financial regulation technology came into the limelight as Korea has implemented a strict “financial China Wall policy” that prohibits all nonbanking companies from owning or holding shares of any kind of banking institutions to prevent stock manipulation.

The China Wall policy is an anomaly to advanced economies that adopt license systems for bank ownership and investment -- considered a global standard by many policy experts outside Korea.

“In the U.K., (even) supermarkets offer banking services,” said Van Der Kleij, emphasizing that any company can own or invest in banks, as long as they obtain a license from the regulator.

Van Der Kleij saw that Korea’s financial China Wall policy can be eased “by making sure the regulatory environment regulates and licenses individual organizations to be responsible and to meet regulatory requirements.”

“Regulations in Korea exist to protect the established industries. So what’s needed is that the established industries tell the regulator that they want to change -- by doing so, they will significantly increase their total market share.”

ENTIQ plans to launch “Fintech Hub Seoul” by the close of 2015 to bridge Asia’s fintech industry and international investors. The company chose Korea as the Asia-Pacific region hub with the leading fintech ecosystem, citing the tech-driven country’s evolving policy environment for ventures and global business potentials.

By Chung Joo-won(joowonc@heraldcorp.com)