Development of ecosystems in the financial sector of Russia

The paper examines the problems and factors in the development of ecosystems in the financial sector and related sectors of economy. It demonstrates the prospects for expanding the population of ecosystems in both the global financial market and the Russian banking system. Special focus is on two main prerequisites for the ecosystem development: digitalization of the entire economy and the emergence of innovative information-communication technologies in the financial sector (fintech). The study aims to juxtapose theoretical concepts and definitions of ecosystem with the real practice in Russia and the prospects for the development of ecosystems in the financial sector in order to produce recommendations on activating and regulating the transition from a traditional to an ecosystem economic model. Methodologically, the research rests on system economic theory, which implies that economy is a field for creating, interacting and developing socio-economic systems of various kinds – object-, process-, project- and environment-based systems. Within the framework of this approach, an ecosystem includes: an organizational component represented by a cluster as an object-based subsystem; infrastructure – an information-technological platform as an environment-based subsystem; communication and logistics component – a network as a process-based subsystem; innovative component – a business incubator as a project-based subsystem. Ecosystems in the financial sector are analyzed for compliance with this requirements. We scrutinize the case of FinTech Association as the most technologically advanced community of banking institutions. The research methods are content analysis, ranking score and logical grouping of research objects. The findings show that it is expedient to create a regulating institution that combines the functions similar to those of the FAS of the RF and the Central Bank of the RF in relation to the ecosystems’ activities.