Welcome back. It's great to be with you again. I'm James Panicki. This is Mlex's weekly podcast covering the big regulatory stories of the week with the

with the assistance of our team of intrepid reporters from around

the world. Now, regular listeners will know that we are no strangers to the complexities of digital

platform regulation here at Mnex. In fact, just scroll back through recent podcasts and you'll see

plenty of evidence for that. Well, an interesting sidebar to

that story is Big Tech's growing interest in financial services. And why wouldn't the technology

giants want to put their reservoir of data to good use in offering banking services to the public?

It makes sense. And on paper, of course, that's all good

and well. There's nothing like injecting competition into an industry usually dominated by large

established players. But with financial services comes tight regulation, rules to keep the risk of

money laundering at bay, to protect consumers, to guarantee competition,

etc. The question that we pose today is this. Is big techs move into financial services being

assisted by the relatively light touch regulation enjoyed by technology giants when compared to the more

demanding rules being faced by Capital B banks.

In just over 10 minutes, we'll take a look at how that issue is playing out in China.

There, the regulatory pushback against FinTech or financial technology is part of a broader

government policy shift against the powerful platforms. First up, though, we're joined by Neil Rowland, Mlex's senior correspondent, covering financial

services from Washington, D.C., although today he joins us from the west coast of Florida.

Now, Neil, you have written about how the Bank for International Settlements has recently sounded alarms about regulations applying to big tech's entry into the financial sector.

So I suppose before we go anywhere today, just remind us what the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements does

and why its opinion on FinTech matters.

It's a collection of the world's central banks, like the Federal Reserve, like the European

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