Paving the way for remote access in Russia
The State Duma of The Russian Federation passed in the first reading a set of bills dealing with the creation and management of electronic platforms for remote access to financial services.
These platforms (marketplaces) will facilitate the remote interaction between the suppliers of financial services and the consumers, enabling the execution of transactions in banking, insurance, securities services and other sectors of the financial industry. Payments will be completed via the special accounts of the marketplace operators or through the fast payments system of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). Users will be authenticated through a unified biometric identification system.
The register of marketplace operators will be maintained by the CBR. These legal entities will not be allowed to combine the operator functions with the activities of a financial institution (apart from the functions of a trade organiser, a registrar, a depositary or a specialised depositary). The operators will establish the rules for each marketplace platform separately and will register them with the CBR.
Such rules will contain the requirements for the participants of the platform, the procedures for information to be placed on the proposed financial products and the procedures for concluding transactions.
The new marketplaces will result in lower administrative office costs and will establish new ways to enter the consumer markets. Apart from that, consumers will be given the opportunity to have online access to different financial products leading to an increase in competition.