Empirical Insights into Financial Integration: Fintech Credit and Regulatory Dynamics

Financial integration is important because it has the potential to enhance economic growth and stability by facilitating cross-border capital flows and reducing financial market fragmentation. This study investigates the influence of FinTech credit and banking regulations on financial integration in both developed and developing countries, spanning the period from 2013 to 2019. We consider financial integration to be the dependent variable, and we select FinTech credit, banking regulations, bank concentration, remittance volumes, state-owned enterprises, and financial development as explanatory variables. The study employs the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to estimate the coefficients. The findings indicate that FinTech credit, remittance volumes, and financial development all contribute positively to financial integration. In contrast, banking regulations exhibit an insignificant relationship with financial integration. Moreover, the results indicate that bank concentration and state-owned enterprises act as deterrents to financial integration among nations. The implications of the results suggest that to enhance the level of financial integration, global economies should promote FinTech credit, increase remittance volumes, and foster financial development while concurrently discouraging bank concentration and state-owned enterprises.