Cumbersome regulation is making it difficult to launch crowd funding companies, peer-to-peer lenders and other innovative finance businesses in Australia, according to a senior lawyer specialising in financial services.K&L Gates partner Andrea Beatty said the "one size fits all" approach to approving applications for Australian credit licences, Australian financial services licences and authorised deposit-taking institution licences was not working.Speaking at a Finsia conference in Sydney yesterday, Beatty said: "To set up a P2P business you need to be licensed to operate a managed investment scheme. That does not fit the new banking model."To launch a crowd funding business in Australia you need a financial markets licence to carry out secondary market trading - the same licence the Australian Securities Exchange has. It is not viable."ASIC commissioner Cathie Armour said the regulator was keen to do what it could to provide supportive infrastructure for fintech companies."At the same time we need to be adaptive within the legislative framework. We are not about reducing standards. Consumers and investors need to have confidence in the products they are buying," she said.Armour conceded that the licensing regime could be "a challenge" for new business and new types of products. She said ASIC was keen on a North American regulatory framework that allowed for alternative trading platforms.ASIC has set up an innovation hub this year to assist start-ups navigate through the regulatory regime. It has also established a digital advisory committee to take expert advice on the issue.Armour said: "We are also doing some things to make employee options more accessible for start-ups."It is not the first time the fintech industry has given ASIC a serve. Speakers on a panel of peer-to-peer and marketplace lenders at an AB&F conference in June said dealing with ASIC was slow, and that the regulator was "cautious" and prone to a "box-ticking" approach. The executive chairman of marketplace lender DirectMoney, Stephen Porges, questioned whether what his company was doing was so different from more established lending businesses that it required such specific focus from the regulator.Porges said: "It is a new way of banking using technology but it is just banking. We are bankers."Graham Andersen, the founder and chief executive of Morgij Analytics, a provider of risk management tools to the finance industry, said his experience of dealing with ASIC was a "box ticking" exercise."We have not ever had a chance to have a discussion. If you don't tick the boxes you have a problem. It is very difficult for us," Andersen said