The Financial Conduct Authority will be operating its digital sandbox on a permanent basis from 1 August, following two pilot trials of the sandbox initiative.
In doing so, the UK regulator will extend access to the scheme to a wider range of start-ups and will now allow data providers to list their data on the platform, allowing them to build traffic and to gather insights on data usage.
Previously, the platform has only been accessible temporarily to firms participating in pilots and TechSprints.
On making the digital sandbox permanent, the FCA indicates that participants will have ongoing access to high quality datasets and application programmable interfaces (APIs). This will include over 200 synthetic, public or anonymised data sets and more than 1000 APIs to support testing and validation of technology products.
The sandbox will offer a collaborative platform, enabling research across firms and a development ecosystem that supports collaboration. This will provide robust protection of data security, offering an integrated development environment while safeguarding data assets held on the platform.
This initiative will also provide what it calls an “observation deck”, enabling stakeholders including regulators to monitor testing as it progresses.
The FCA will accept applications for firms to become a permanent member of the Digital Sandbox from 1 August 2023. Applicants may apply under nine categories: banking, investment, lending, payments, insurance, pensions, wholesale buy-side, wholesale sell-side and cross-sector applications.
