This is the fourth in a series of client alerts in relation to Law No. 4 of 2023 on the Development and Strengthening of the Financial Sector (“P2SK Law”), dated 12 January 2023. Aside from asserting the provisions that have been stipulated by the Financial Service Authority, the P2SK Law sets out several new provisions that open a new chapter in the financial conglomeration and consolidation. The P2SK Law now requires financial conglomerates to establish or appoint a financial holding company, a legal entity that is expected to control, consolidate and be responsible for all of the financial conglomerate’s activities. The P2SK Law also affirms OJK’s authority to give written orders to financial services companies to push for financial consolidation.

The P2SK Law introduces the concept of financial instrument managers and trust fund managers. Both are designed as specific purpose entities licensed by Otoritas Jasa Keuangan and established to perform asset securitization and/or trustee fund management activities. The government expects the existence of SPVs to contribute to financial instrument diversification. Trustees, on the other hand, are regulated with the aim of increasing participation by financial market players and bringing about improvement in disclosure and good corporate governance regulations.

The soon-to-be enacted P2SK Law introduces “financing service businesses” as a new umbrella term for several categories of financing services, covering the businesses of finance companies (multifinance), venture capital companies, infrastructure financing companies, IT-based collective funding service providers (peer-to-peer lending platforms), and pawnbroker companies.

In the spirit of Bank Indonesia’s Payment System 2025 Visions that were introduced in May 2019, and in conjunction with the G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-Border Payments, Bank Indonesia has agreed on cooperating with the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to enable consumers and merchants in both countries to make and accept instant cross-border QR payments. The memorandum of understanding for this cooperation was signed on 9 December 2022 in Tokyo.

On 15 December 2022, the House of Representatives passed the draft omnibus law on the financial sector which is referred to as the “Financial Sector Development and Reinforcement (Pengembangan dan Penguatan Sektor Keuangan) Law” (“P2SK Law”). The draft law is currently under an enactment process with its effective date to be further announced. The P2SK Law, among other things, stipulates the reconfiguration of supervisory powers among the different regulators over a number of sectors (including the financial technology and digital financial assets sectors) that had been overlapping and led to regulatory gaps.

In the spirit of the ASEAN Central Bank Governors’ Meeting in April 2022 (which is one of Indonesia’s G20 Presidency events) and Indonesia’s Payment System 2025 Visions that were introduced in May 2019, Bank Indonesia has launched cooperation with Bank of Thailand that enables consumers and merchants in both countries to make and accept instant cross-border QR payments for goods and services.

To keep up with the momentum of digitalized lending and address the multitude of aspects (including financial inclusion and consumer protection) impacted by this ever-growing practice, the Indonesian Financial Services Authority (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan or OJK) has finally issued the long-anticipated regulation that revamped OJK Regulation No. 77/POJK.01/2016 on Information Technology-Based Lending Services (POJK 77). On 4 July 2022, OJK enacted OJK Regulation No. 10/POJK.05/2022 on Information Technology Based Collective Funding Services, updating the requirements for peer-to-peer lending operators and revoked POJK 77.

On the country’s 76th Independence Day, Bank Indonesia announced its collaboration with the Bank of Thailand, Thailand’s central bank, for a trial of a cross-border QR payment linkage that is targeted to go live in Q1 2022.

Happy New Year 2021! We hope that this year things will get better.

Bank Indonesia has issued Regulation No.22/23/PBI/2020 on Payment Systems (“Payment System Regulation”), which is an “umbrella” regulation for the payment system industry. The issuance of this regulation is an implementation of the 2025 Indonesia Payment System Blueprint, which we outlined in our previous client alert. This “umbrella” regulation restructures the regulatory framework of payment systems, including the reclassification of activities of payment system operators. Bank Indonesia’s approach in outlining the rules introduced in this regulation appears to be principle-based and strategic. The technical and operational details of how the rules are supposed to be observed will be outlined in future Bank Indonesia implementing regulations. We anticipate that those will be issued in the coming months, so keep an eye on this space.

In this recording of our introductory workshop, Baker McKenzie FinTech Legal Accelerator: Cracking the Legal Code, held as part of the Hong Kong FinTech Week 2020, our lawyers across Asia Pacific give an overview of key fintech issues that start-ups or scale-ups need to know as they grow and expand…