Eight members of the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) have signed a fintech cooperation agreement with the Financial Supervisory Commission of Taiwan (FSC), which extends the work of the CSA Regulatory Sandbox Initiative and the FSC FinTech Regulatory Sandbox.

The CSA Regulatory Sandbox Initiative, designed to support fintech businesses seeking to offer products, services and applications in Canada, allows firms to register and obtain exemptions from securities laws, in order to test their offerings in the Canadian market on a time-limited basis.

In Taiwan, the FSC FinTech Regulatory Sandbox “provides a safe environment in which experimenters are exempted from acquiring prior approvals from the FSC and observing related financial regulations within the period of experimentation.” The FSC also provides developers with support including consultation, referral and collaborative networking.

The bilateral agreement, agreed to by regulatory authorities in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan, is designed to create a mechanism for financial technology cooperation between Canada and Taiwan.

Louis Morisset, CSA chair and president and CEO of the Autorité des marchés financiers, says “investors and the fintech industry will benefit from our regulatory environments, which combine flexibility with appropriate investor protection measures.”