P2P trade bodies eye European consortium
European trade bodies representing the peer-to-peer and crowdfunding industries met in Paris last week to discuss a potential pan-European consortium.
Those in attendance included the UK Crowdfunding Association (UKCFA), Financement Participatif France (FPF) and Germany’s Bundesverband Crowdfunding.
The meeting took place at FPF’s European crowdfunding event, The Place to Crowd, on 14 February.
More than 500 attendees from across Europe met to discuss best practice, exchange ideas and forge partnerships, as the European Markets and Securities Authority’s (ESMA) implementation of the European Crowdfunding Service Providers (ECSP) regulations continues.
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Rebuildingsociety founder Daniel Rajkumar attended The Place to Crowd on the behalf of the UKCFA and told Peer2Peer Finance News a meeting was held to discuss the challenges faced by associations and to explore the possibility of forming a consortium of associations.
“The discussion revolved around the vision to have a consortium of associations that would collaborate over common challenges such as data collection, lobbying and education,” he said.
“Whilst there are a few national level associations, they don’t really speak with a common voice at the moment to ESMA, the regulator, and so there’s good will for us to get together and find ways to collaborate in ways that make it efficient and easy to share best practices.”
ESMA initially gave platforms a one-year transition period to meet the new regulations, which were finalised in late 2020 and became law in late 2021.
However, the November 2022 deadline has since been extended to November 2023.