This week, Hanne Melin of eBay Inc.'s Public Policy Lab attended an exclusive roundtable organized by the Milken Institute in London discussing how policy and regulation can responsibly facilitate new financial technologies ("FinTech"). The focal point for the debate was a paper just released by the Institute outlining the building blocks of a "21st Century Regulator's Toolkit."

The paper describes those characteristics of FinTech that call for a new approach to regulation: innovation, disintermediation, convergence, low costs/barriers, borderless and democratization. Notably, these characteristics are not specific to FinTech but increasingly shape most sectors as the disruptive effect of technology spreads across industries. Hence, ideas for new approaches to lawmaking and regulation carry general relevance. An example at point is Melin's participation in a debate at this year's European Health Forum. 

The spirit of the Milken Institute paper is very much aligned with the 2013 white paper by PayPal, which puts forward for debate one model of agile, iterative and results-driven rule making based on the idea of modernizing performance-based regulation through data analytics. However, change does not – and most likely, should not – happen overnight. And here, the Milken paper makes an important contribution to the debate by proposing steps for bridging today's regulatory mindset and one which is more experimental and outcome oriented, such as regulatory pilots, more of an engagement than enforcement approach, giving industry and consumer/investor advocates a larger role in the rule making process, etc.

Over the last year, eBay's Public Policy Lab has been spurring debate about new approaches to regulation in different forum. The paper by the Milken Institute provides valuable input to evolve and deepen discussions.