Fintech and financial stability: Evidence from spatial analysis for 25 countries

Fintech has experienced rapid advances in recent years. This study examines the impact of Fintech on financial stability for a group of 25 countries during 2013-2020. We adopt the novel Fintech-enabled financing volume to directly measure Fintech development. We utilise both the aggregate and disaggregated level of Fintech financing; the latter includes crowdfunding, business lending and consumer lending, each has a different funding process and default rates. We account for spatial dependence in financial stability across countries by employing various spatial models. Our findings first reveal that there is positive spatial dependence of financial stability across countries. It implies that financial stability has a positive spillover to neighbouring countries and validates the necessity of spatial analysis. Second, based on the Spatial Durbin Model which best describes our data, Fintech financing makes a positive local and cross-border contribution towards financial stability, irrespective of alternative weight matrices and sample sizes. Such positive impact is more profound in countries with smaller sizes of Fintech financing volume, and the cross-border effect is stronger with closer geographic proximity. Finally, crowdfunding enhances financial stability, whilst consumer lending has a contrasting destabilising effect.