The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), responsible for conduct and relevant prudential regulation of financial services firms and financial markets in the U.K., has announced the details of the firms selected to be part of cohort 4 of its regulatory sandbox, according to an FCA post. Of the 29 firms selected, about 40 percent of them are blockchain focused.
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The sandbox’s cohort 4[2] is a regulatory environment where firms can test innovative products, services or business models in a controlled environment with real customers. Businesses can test out their services with the aim of reducing costs of time-to-market while providing support in identifying “appropriate consumer protection safeguards” to be built into the products. This particular regulatory sandbox is a brainchild of Project Innovate[3], an initiative the FCA created in 2014 "to promote competition in the interest of consumers."
Cohort 4
The FCA said it had selected 29 firms out of the 69 that applied to this most recent cohort’s regulatory sandbox. FCA Executive Director of Strategy and Competition Christopher Woolard spoke about the development which he says is "the largest sandbox cohort to date" as a "record number of applicants" met the eligibility criteria.
Of the 29 firms that have been selected for cohort 4, about a dozen of these companies use distributed ledger technology (DLT) for automating issuance of equity/debt, insurance provision and for the application of APIs; others offer services related to crypto assets.
20|30 is one of the companies accepted into cohort 4. It uses the Ethereum blockchain to help companies raise funds by issuing equity tokens. As part of the sandbox cohort, it will be able to test the issuance of equity tokens to investors using Nivaura's integration with the London Stock Exchange Group (“LSEG”) Turquoise platform.
