The insurance sector, in riding the wave of the FinTech phenomenon, has been rapidly expanding, with a slew of firms having emerged to provide so-called "InsurTech" services. These services incorporate concepts such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, digitalisation and the sharing economy to various aspects of the insurance industry. This profusion of technology brings with it the promise of various benefits including increasing efficiency and lowering costs for not only insurers and intermediaries, but also businesses or consumers as end-users of insurance. However, the development of InsurTech comes with corresponding risks and regulatory concerns not currently accounted for by the traditional regulatory model. This paper will examine potential risks associated with the application of InsurTech and scope out how current regulations might hinder (rather than facilitate) the development of InsurTech. This paper then concludes with a discussion of various possible responses or regulatory approaches to InsurTech applications.

In the context of intelligent finance, the traditional legal framework targeting financial professionals is impractical and ineffective for robo-advisors do not possess independent legal personality, thereby leading to problems of empty enforcement, confusion concerning the identity of obligors and the failure of the existing system of duties. To deal with this dilemma, lawmakers need to restructure the obligor's identification mechanism and the system of duties. The substance of duties for the mode of robo-advisor needs to penetrate the complex veil and keep up with the algorithmic level to reflect their essential characteristics. The principles for the new regulatory paradigm are to avoid the evasion of accountabilities and responsibilities caused by dodging and relaxing the duties with the excuse of algorithm black box, as well as to avoid overburdening obligors by fully embracing the new development of artificial intelligence.

Over the last decade, FinTech—broadly defined as the use of new technologies to compete in the marketplace of financial institutions and intermediaries—has disrupted the financial services sector. Here, we revisit the question of how banks and regulators can best respond to this disruption. We argue that incumbent financial service providers can learn useful lessons from the experience of the most innovative companies in the world and their efforts to navigate the new realities of doing business in a networked age. One of the striking features of successful large businesses with an established track record for sustained high performance has been their capacity to reinvent themselves as what we characterise as innovation 'ecosystems'.Akey element of an 'ecosystem' style organisation has been the implementation of effective corporate venturing strategies that feed dynamic, technology-driven innovation (what has been termed borrowing "the Start-Up Genie's Magic"). Here, we identify seven corporate venturing strategies adopted by the most innovative companies in the world and argue that incumbent banks and other financial service providers could utilise similar strategies in responding to FinTech.Acrucial element of these strategies is a recognition of the value of co-creation, namely an inclusive, collaborative partnering between incumbents and non-traditional market players. To implement this objective effectively, incumbents need to absorb the energy, skills, and resources of the most dynamic start-ups. We argue that some banks are already moving in this direction and that this trend towards the 'unbundling' of incumbents is likely to continue. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of such an account for regulators and regulatory design, more generally. In order to establish an environment for successful and sustainable 'ecosystems', regulators need to become active participants in these more open forms of business organisation.We characterise this regulatory approach as 'community-driven' regulatory design and identify some key issues with such a regulatory strategy.

In Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia, standard retail investor protection laws do not apply to special categories of individual investors, which are broadly based on wealth or income. Prospectuses are not required for the sale of financial products to these investors and they do not have the full benefit of advice relating to the suitability of these products. However, with the increasing complexity of products and potentially unregulated alternative investments such as crypto-assets, this legal framework is increasingly being debated and challenged.We explore the rationale behind the special categories, the implications of falling into these categories and the appropriateness of the current framework. We argue that the existing criteria are anachronistic and inappropriate. Instead, all individuals making investment decisions should have the benefit of a rating framework that is based on both complexity and risks and be subject to a suitability test in the case of complex products.

We use a unique dataset to examine the link between environmental, social and governance ("ESG") disclosure and quality through a cross-country comparison of disclosure requirements and stewardship codes. We find a strong relationship between the extent of ESG disclosure and the quality of a firm's disclosure. Furthermore, we find that ESG is correlated with decreased risk. This result suggests that firms with good ESG scores are simply disclosing more information. Finally, we show that ESG scores have little or no impact on risk-adjusted financial performance.

Crowdfunding—the use of the internet and other social media by entrepreneurs to attract funding for their ideas and projects—holds forth the promise of mitigating the funding gap that entrepreneurs face. While regulators in the US, the UK and Singapore have made adjustments to the securities fundraising rules in response to the demand for a reconsideration on how the regulatory system should respond to the potential benefits proffered by crowdfunding, HK has not carried out such an exercise. This article examines whether the current fundraising rules are more restrictive than those found in the reference jurisdictions, and whether further reforms are necessary. The comparative study reveals the surprising liberality of the existing HK regulatory regime, the current regulatory strategies employed by reference jurisdictions to strike a better balance between access to funding and investor protection, and what lessons HK may derive from them.

Since the United States Supreme Court's 1994 adoption of “transformative use" as a criterion for evaluating the first statutory fair use factor, "transformative use" analysis has engulfed all of fair use, becoming transformed, and perhaps deformed, in the process.Afinding of "transformativeness" often foreordained the ultimate outcome, as the remaining factors, especially the fourth, withered into restatements of the first. Lately, however, courts are expressing greater scepticism concerning what uses actually “transform" the original content. As a result, courts may be reforming “transformative use" to reinvigorate the other statutory factors, particularly the inquiry into the impact of the use on the potential markets for or value of the copied work. The article concludes with some suggestions for rebalancing the factors.

This article explores the impact of the Singapore Court of Appeal's landmark decision in BOM v BOK , where a full panel of five Supreme Court judges re-examined the status and scope of several closely-related doctrines of "unfairness" recognised under Singapore's contract law. The apex court formally articulated a three-pronged test for an unconscionability doctrine, taking pains to emphasise that Singapore should only recognise a “narrow doctrine" of unconscionability, while dismissing the possibility of an “umbrella doctrine" that merges the doctrines of duress, undue influence and unconscionability despite the court's view that there were “close linkages" between them. The breadth of the obiter dicta found in the decision, along with its 22-paragraph coda, agitated the doctrinal waters surrounding these vitiating factors and triggered a spirited riposte from a contributor to the March 2019 edition of this journal in which a detailed critique of the decision was canvassed. This article seeks to do three things. Firstly, it explains why the Court of Appeal's decision to adopt a narrow formulation of the doctrine of unconscionability for Singapore was the sensible thing to do. Secondly, it examines some of the conceptual difficulties associated with the equivocal statements made by the Court of Appeal in relation to the doctrinal overlaps between these adjacent vitiating factors. Thirdly, it proposes an organisational framework, consistent with BOM v BOK's rejection of an all-encompassing umbrella doctrine of unconscionability, for the Singapore courts to visualise the relationship between these vitiating factors so that future judicial developments of these doctrines bring greater clarity and coherence to this dynamic frontier of contract law.

This article seeks to demonstrate that under the LTA there are no impediments to the satisfaction of an equity based on a claim in proprietary estoppel and its enforceability against third parties. That there are problems in these two respects is misconceived in light of case law and the relevant statutory provisions in the LTA . As for the satisfaction of the equity, it is argued that a principled approach must be adopted notwithstanding the wide discretion conferred on the courts on the matter.

Legal recognition of indigenous land rights for the indigenous peoples in the Malaysian state of Sarawak is still in an unfortunate state. Despite being the largest ethnic group of the state and enjoying benefits under the federal system, the fight to hold onto their traditional customs is far from over. The recent Malaysia Federal Court rulings in Sandah (No 1) and (No 2) illustrated this point as the court denied their native customary rights on their ancestral land and also their rights to have their case heard by at least one judge with Bornean judicial experience. With no clear law to shed light on the legal existence of their traditional customs as well as the Constitution's silence on the requirement to have at least one judge with Bornean judicial experience, the Federal Court's endeavour to resolve these issues merits attention. This paper thus reviews and comments on the decisions of the Federal Court, with special focus on the implications for the federal system.