The Capital Markets Authority of Saudi Arabia recently granted Falcom Financial Service Co a Financial Technology Experimental Permit — or better known as a sandbox license — to create an equity crowdfunding platform.
Falcom is described as a full fledged investment banking group — with the new sandbox license, the group will be able to create a platform for investors to participate in funding small and medium size enterprises in exchange for shares.
Following the conditions laid on in the Financial Technology Experiment Framework, Falcom’s testing period for the equity crowdfunding platform will not exceed 2 years from when the permit was granted.
Upon completion of a successful testing, Falcom will be given the option to proceed with a wider scale adoption across the Kingdom.
The concept of equity crowdfunding is one that has gain a lot of traction around the globe, however this one of the first few instances where we’ve observed that an investment banking group has been granted a sandbox license to operate a platform.
In the past the regulator has also granted two other companies license to experiment with equity crowdfunding.
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