The inaugural FinTech Abu Dhabi conference ended with several key initiatives designed to boost the Fintech sector in the region. The two-day event, which was held under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, was attended by over 600 delegates including senior government officials, representations from UAE-based embassies and international FinTech leaders and technopreneurs.
Richard Teng, CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of ADGM, commented on the event;
“The first ever FinTech Abu Dhabi was a huge success. This was a world-class Summit featuring a stellar line up of speakers that challenged stakeholders to think ahead of the ecosystem needed to support FinTech innovation. As we move towards a knowledge-based and innovative economy, FinTech will play a vital role in helping to shape the future of this region.”
New initiatives announced at FinTech Abu Dhabi include:
- The launch of the ADGM FinTech Innovation Centre by 2018 – a Fintech hub at ADGM Square on Al Maryah Island, featuring state-of-the-art facilitates to encourage global Fintech communities to come together to tap into each other’s best practices, to develop and deploy innovative solutions for the region. The Fintech Innovation Centre will also be home to approved participants of the ADGM Regulatory Laboratory (RegLab), a conducive regulatory environment that allow companies to live-test innovative Fintech products in collaboration with the regulator.
- ADGM’s global partnership with the world’s largest startup accelerator Plug and Play . The new acceleration program by Silicon Valley-based Plug and Play will be housed in the ADGM FinTech Innovation Centre. Some of Plug and Play’s success stories include PayPal, Dropbox, LendingClub and others.
- The first regional Fintech bridge established with the UAE Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) and the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of ADGM to foster financial innovation that serves the needs of the capital markets in the UAE. The new partnership will allow SCA and the FSRA to share and exchange pertinent information on innovation, regulatory approaches to financial innovation, economic and commercial developments that impact each other’s jurisdictions.
- Two winners of the FinTech Abu Dhabi Innovation Challenge – Silent Eight from Singapore and FRS Labs from India – were part of the 11 finalists who showcased their solutions to a panel of international industry experts for the winning title. The two winners will be attending Singapore Fintech Festival in November with the ADGM Team.
- ADGM and Temenos, the software specialist for banking and finance, announced their intention to collaborate and strengthen the Fintech ecosystem in Abu Dhabi. Temenos will provide a sandbox service to the start-ups at the ADGM FinTech Innovation Centre. This sandbox, a non-production cloud-based version of the Temenos best-selling core banking system, will enable start-ups to integrate their solutions with banking data and functionality as well as to test them for scalability and robustness.
FinTech Abu Dhabi is the first-of-such event in this region that is designed, curated and organised by an international financial centre – Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM).
