Legaltech & Fintech, verticals destined to understand each other... and to converge

Quino Fernández, director of Barcelona Finance Hub, told us in 2024: "It is important for the legal world to take an interest in its intersection with the financial world". And that intersection is really fruitful for both parties. If we focus on clients, the trend is for professional profiles to become increasingly cross-cutting, and this union between the financial and legal worlds makes perfect sense.

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This convergence between legal and financial technology represents one of the most significant phenomena in the digital transformation of organizations. They are undoubtedly different fields, but all this territory created from their intersection is full of opportunities and challenges for professionals. And it is to be hoped that this vision also lands in the curricula of Law Degrees, which is the field we are most familiar with. But that is another story. As we were saying, this convergence appears in aspects such as Process Automation, Document Management and especially Regulatory Compliance.

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The law firm Cuatrecasas saw this clearly. When it created its accelerator, Cuatrecasasas Acelera, its first edition was full of legaltech solutions. In recent editions, legaltech has practically disappeared, replaced by fintech, insurtech, healthtech, etc. projects. There are many reasons, but we believe that the most important is obvious: their clients, their objectives to generate business.

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But there is also no doubt that legaltech solutions are used by the financial and insurance sectors (we will mention some examples in a moment) and all this seems to me to be proof that, as Albert Ferré, CEO of the Global Legaltech Hub, told us at the time, although legaltech has a more limited scope (at least until it grows along the B2C highway), it is undoubtedly the little brother that more developed verticals such as fintech or insurtech always want to have in their arms. 

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The growing presence of lawyers with a transversal legaltech/fintech profile should be highlighted. Here are two examples. The first, that of Rocío González, who defines herself as a lawyer specialized in the financial and legal sector, specifically in matters such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and data analysis. Her goal, to bridge the gap between the law and cutting-edge technology. For example, she has been part of projects as a Scrum Master, focusing on agile project management within the FinTech and LegalTech areas. A woman to meet, even if virtually, because right now, as a digital nomad, she is in Nepal.

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José Mª Baños is a founding partner of LetsLaw, a digital business law firm specialized in corporate law, digital law, fintech and protection of intangibles. He has experience in sectors such as e-commerce, fintech, e-health, AI and insurtech, among others. In addition, he is a mentor, teacher and business angel with a focus on B2B SaaS, B2C and Legaltech. From his firm I would like to highlight the Letsfinance area, created to provide innovative financial solutions for the new generation of companies.

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On the other hand, we also find it very significant to see how prestigious law firms such as RocaJunyent, CMS, Ontier, Herbert Smith Freehills are partners of the Spanish Fintech and Insurtech Association, as well as benchmarks in the judicial recovery industry such as Intrum or compliance software such as Formalize. These and other law firms continually appear in the media announcing that they advise on financing rounds and alliances between FinTech companies and financial institutions. By the way, last December 12, the I Conference on Financial Regulation was held, where the FinTech 2.0 White Paper was presented. At this event we saw the panel "The most current challenges and barriers of the FinTech ecosystem in Spain and Europe" in which lawyers such as Xavier Foz, Partner at RocaJunyent; Gonzalo Navarro, from Ontier; Jaime Bofill, from Herbert Smith Freehills; and Gloria Hernandez, from finReg360 will intervene.

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In the ecosystem of legaltech companies, it is becoming common for these platforms to focus on fintech, insurtech and other verticals. We have the example of Stelo.ai, which defines itself as your AI-based intelligent document processing partner. With its feet dipped in various verticals, we highlight those where it has the most presence: secure lending, financial institutions, collaborative economy, financial technology and rental. We also talk about Lexdoka, a platform that manages the automation of contracts in organizations, covering the entire contractual lifecycle. Lexdoka manages assets by controlling the financial information of contracts, a relevant information in this type of documents. Its objective? To facilitate accessibility, control and reporting to avoid non-compliance and fines, keeping the finance team always informed and prepared. Finally, we met Mabui, an application developer that has created the ExpsLaw service, a solution that offers law firms an expense management tool and integration with their accounting software.

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In addition, we recently read on the Artificial Lawyer portal that the financial and legal technology platform 9fin raised $50 million in a funding round. It is an information and analytics platform focused on debt capital markets and includes several useful features for lawyers, such as analysis of covenants, locating draft precedents in a very short time, comparison of agreements and predictive capabilities to make the best decisions.

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For all these reasons, an initiative such as Barcelona Finance Hub, oriented to the entire ecosystem of financial innovation, which includes FinTech, InsurTech, LegalTech and PropTech startups and scaleups, is truly necessary in a world where the transversality of legal professional profiles is indisputably essential. 

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Article signed by:

Josep Mª Fernández Comas, Director of Derecho Práctico

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