Sectors

FinTech

Our expertise:

The FinTech sector is dynamic, innovative and ambitious. We enable our clients' progress through excellent legal expertise, experience, commitment and commercial focus, together with an ability to adapt to changing contexts.

Our expertise covers the full range of advisory, transactional, regulatory and project work, including commercial contracts, IP and IT issues, tax, data protection and privacy matters, mergers and acquisitions, private equity investments and financing, regulatory authorisations, and on-going regulatory compliance and risk management.

We advise existing financial services clients who are adapting in this FinTech era and new start-ups who are entering the FinTech market in either a regulated or unregulated capacity. Our clients include financial service institutions, payment and e-money providers, insurance companies, investment firms, crowdfunding platform operators, asset managers, funds, and technology companies. Our lawyers are actively involved in industry working groups including those established by the FinTech and Payments Association of Ireland and Irish Funds.

Key areas:

Our cross-practice sector group can assist our clients in the following areas:

• Financial Services Regulatory: authorisations, payments and e-money compliance, lending and investment management regulation, compliance support and advice on providing financial services online and through mobile apps
• Risk Management and Fraud: outsourcing, corporate governance and development of robust risk management frameworks. Advising in relation to fraud investigations.
• Tax: Advice in relation to the Irish tax regime, IP tax considerations and optimum tax structures of Irish operations (as well as ongoing advice on taxation and regulatory issues)
• Corporate: structuring and company formation advice for establishing in Ireland, advice in relation to IT contracts, licensing, intellectual property protection. E-commerce legislation and enforceability and execution of online/mobile contracts
• Data protection: advising on general data protection compliance and privacy policies, preparations and strategy for the GDPR, data protection audits, record retention obligations, registration and notification requirements, data security and breach notifications, cloud computing, contracts in relation to international data transfers, cookies compliance, profiling and behavioural advertising, dealing with law enforcement requests and actions/prosecutions
• Cyber security: advising on cyber security obligations and developing appropriate detection and prevention frameworks, security incident management (eg notification obligations and regulatory enforcement risks), internal investigations. Advising on data theft and its interaction with cyber-crime in the context of fraud and asset tracing
• Investment and Venture Capital: advice in relation to Government incentives for overseas investors, negotiations with IDA Ireland, banks and other regulatory bodies, structure of relationships between founders and investors, structuring the transfer of IP from founders, universities and other third parties to the company, due diligence and advising on exit strategies/merger and acquisition activities