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Abu Dhabi signs 'fintech' MoU with Singapore

Chris Hamblin, Editor, London, 10 March 2017

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The Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Abu Dhabi Global Market have agreed to co-operate more closely to nurture entrepreneurship in the area of financial IT.

The co-operative agreement establishes rules by which both regulators can help innovators and new IT businesses to understand their regulatory regimes better than they do today and to provide them with support through the application and authorisation process. Both regulators will also undertake joint innovation projects and, according to their press releases, 'explore' them. These projects will involve digital and mobile payments, blockchain and distributed ledgers, Big Data, flexible platforms (involving application programming interfaces or APIs) and other new-ish developments.

The agreement will hopefully create opportunities for 'fintech' firms in Singapore and Abu Dhabi that want to expand into each other’s markets - those in the former, one suspects, expanding into the latter more than the other way around. In a Freudian slip, Richard Teng, the CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi, said, “Asia and the Middle East and North Africa regions have immense growth potential and a large underserved financial sector.”

In August 2015, the MAS opened its Financial Technology & Innovation Group, making it responsible for formulating regulatory policies and developing strategies to facilitate the use of technology and innovation. Teng's Financial Services Regulatory Authority launched its regulatory laboratory or RegLab in November 2016 to provide a controlled environment in which innovative businesses might develop and test IT.

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