Financial Services, Latvia

“In any industry at this stage of development, we come across market participants who do not operate according to best market practice. This can leave a negative impact on the whole industry and its further development. We have developed guidelines by collating operating standards, to consolidate investor confidence in the crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending fields. We are satisfied that market participants have positively evaluated this self-regulatory initiative from the field,” pointed out Gints Āboltiņš, Head of the Alternative Financial Services Association of Latvia, indicating that this provides greater transparency for investors in evaluating a platform’s operation.

Guidelines for the Crowdfunding Industry in Latvia will cover issues such as protection of platform users funds, company corporate management, information availability and the provision of information for customers, advertising practice, measures to avoid conflict of interest, and data protection, as well as a range of other principles.

Companies which undertake to implement the guidelines in their business practice will ensure that these are understood by company employees and that the guidelines are also freely available to investors both in English and Latvian. The Alternative Financial Services Association of Latvia has the right to forbid companies from referring to the guidelines if breaches have been established.

“We are proud that TWINO, as the first participant in Latvia’s peer-to-peer lending platform field, has undertaken to follow Latvia’s Crowdfunding Industry Guidelines, which prescribe strict requirements on the protection of platform users funds, corporate management, business ethics and the availability of information. We believe that these guidelines will be a great measuring stick to ensure responsible operations of investment platforms, while also preventing the potentially dishonest players from joining the P2P lending market,” emphasizes TWINO Investment Platform Lead, Roberts Lasovskis.