The rise of FinTech as a systemic risk transmitter: A time-frequency analysis of spillovers to energy and macroeconomic markets

The rapid expansion of Financial Technology (FinTech) is fundamentally reshaping financial systems, yet its role as a source of systemic risk and its dynamic connectedness with traditional energy and macroeconomic markets remain critically underexplored. This paper employs an integrated time-frequency framework to model financial spillover networks and demonstrates its utility in analyzing the connectedness between emerging FinTech sub-sectors, energy markets, and macroeconomic uncertainty. Using the Diebold and Yilmaz (2012) spillover index in the time domain and the Baruník and Křehlík (2018) spectral decomposition in the frequency domain, we uncover a highly interconnected system: total connectedness reaches 43.62% for returns and 40.65% for volatility, showing that price shocks propagate more strongly than risk shocks. During the COVID-19 period, interconnectedness surged above 70%, highlighting how external shocks intensify contagion. We find that key FinTech indices such as Kensho Future Payments, KBW FinTech, and Kensho Alternative Finance act as major net transmitters, while the Distributed Ledger index, geopolitical risk, U.S. policy uncertainty, Brent oil, and U.S. 10-year Treasury yields are net receivers, signaling that within the financial network, shock propagation is now led by FinTech rather than emanating primarily from traditional macroeconomic indicators. Frequency results add important insight: volatility spillovers are mainly short-term (44.57%), reflecting transient fear contagion, while return spillovers are more persistent. Overall, our findings challenge the macro-driven spillover view and offer a time-sensitive framework for effective hedging and regulation. FinTech emerges as a key short-term shock transmitter, with clear implications for investors’ hedging strategies and regulators’ systemic risk monitoring.