To FinTech and Beyond

TLDR

FinTech introduces new technologies into finance, revolutionizing the industry, and in 2017 the Review of Financial Studies launched a competition to generate research proposals when academia had not yet focused on the topic. This introductory article aims to describe the recent FinTech phenomenon and the novel editorial protocol for the special issue using the Registered Reports format. The special issue was assembled through a Registered Reports protocol, a novel editorial approach adopted by the journal. The issue resulted from the competition, highlighting insights from submitted proposals, selecting projects for completion, and offering observations to guide future FinTech research.

Abstract

FinTech is about the introduction of new technologies into the financial sector, and it is now revolutionizing the financial industry. In 2017, when the academic finance community was not actively researching FinTech, the editorial team of the Review of Financial Studies launched a competition to develop research proposals focused on this topic. This special issue is the result. In this introductory article, we describe the recent FinTech phenomenon and the novel editorial protocol employed for this special issue following the Registered Reports format. We discuss what we learned from the submitted proposals about the field of FinTech and which ones we selected to be completed and ultimately come out in this special issue. We also provide several observations to help guide future research in the emerging area of FinTech.