Willem Röell is a co-head of the Financial Innovation team at De Roos. Willem specialises in financial markets regulation. He advises all kinds of financial undertakings on a broad range of regulatory matters, including licensing, conduct of business rules, governance, and the regulatory aspects of M&A transactions.

Willem especially focuses on assisting clients with introducing innovative technologies and business models into the financial sector. He assists them with issues related to market access, governance, outsourcing and communication with regulators. For example, in relation to innovative payment solutions, initial coin offerings, distributed ledger solutions, robo-advice and artificial intelligence.

Willem has been recognized in the Chambers FinTech Legal - Netherlands 2025 rankings for his work in the fintech and digital assets space.

Willem wrote the Dutch handbook Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) and is contributing editor of the Dutch Financial Law Review. He published articles on upcoming crypto regulation, issuing tokenised securities via ICOs, stable coins, e-money and fiat currencies and requirements for artificial intelligence solutions in the financial sector. He also co-authored the Netherlands chapters of:

• The International Comparative Legal Guide to: Fintech in 2017-2021
• Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation 2019 and 2020
• Chambers ‘Fintech 2021’ Global Practice Guide
• Legal500 Guide on Blockchain Law
• Legal500 Guide on Fintech laws and regulations
• Global Legal Insights - Fintech 2023: Netherlands

Prior to joining De Roos, Willem worked as senior associate Financial Markets Regulation at De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek. Willem is a member of the Dutch Association for Financial Law and is a member of the editorial board of the Dutch Financial Law Review (Tijdschrift voor Financieel Recht in de Praktijk). Willem is a council member of Rabobank Amsterdam and acts as board member for various charitable / nonprofit organisations.

Practice areas:
Willem has registered financial law as his legal practice area in the Netherlands Bar’s register of legal practice areas (rechtsgebiedenregister), which requires one to obtain ten training credits annually in the registered legal practice area, in accordance with the standards set by the Netherlands Bar.