Africa's financial services sector has grown around gaps left by traditional banking, and regulators are still working out how to treat mobile money, digital lending and cross-border payment platforms. Rules built for a bank rarely map cleanly onto a fintech, and central banks are updating licensing regimes at different speeds and in different directions.
Financial services and fintech
A licensing category that exists in one market may not exist in the next. Capital controls, data localisation rules and consumer protection requirements can change a product's economics quickly, often with limited warning.
How we assess regulatory change
We track how licensing and regulatory treatment for financial services and fintech products are evolving across markets, drawing on relationships with the regulators and industry figures shaping these rules, not just the published text of them. This applies our regulatory and policy intelligence and political economy analysis services specifically to financial sector regulation.
What clients gain
Visibility into where financial regulation is heading, not just where it currently stands, giving investors and operators time to adjust product design or market sequencing before rules change under them.
Who this tends to matter to
Investors assessing regulatory exposure before entering a market. Fintechs and banks navigating licensing across multiple jurisdictions. Development finance institutions backing financial inclusion programmes that need to anticipate policy direction.