Recital 2

Digitization of financial services


The use of ICT has in the past decades gained a pivotal role in the provision of financial services, to the point where it has now acquired a critical importance in the operation of typical daily functions of all financial entitiesas defined in Article 2, points (a) to (t). Digitalisation now covers, for instance, payments, which have increasingly moved from cash and paper-based methods to the use of digital solutions, as well as securities clearing and settlement, electronic and algorithmic trading, lending and funding operations, peer-to-peer finance, credit rating, claim management and back-office operations. The insurance sector has also been transformed by the use of ICT, from the emergence of insurance intermediariesan insurance intermediary as defined in Article 2(1), point (3), of Directive (EU) 2016/97 of the European Parliament and of the Council; offering their services online operating with InsurTech, to digital insurance underwriting. Finance has not only become largely digital throughout the whole sector, but digitalisation has also deepened interconnections and dependencies within the financial sector and with third-party infrastructure and service providers.