The Elephant In The Room: Fintech Regulation In The GCC

The UAE’s fintech landscape was in its infancy a few years ago. Today, all of that has changed; as one of the region’s top financial technology centers, Dubai alone is home to over 80 fintech start-ups. That’s 20% of the world’s fintech businesses in one city!

The expanding digital economy, combined with regional innovation initiatives, makes UAE an attractive place to launch and scale a start-up. Given the changing landscape, affordable financing solutions remains one of the greatest challenges for companies needing funding to grow and prosper. The lack of transparency and unavailability of validated information with little or no business data, no official records, no credit history, poor practices and structures, and a higher risk of default constitute major barriers for banks to come forth to offer financial support.

Access to information on regulatory compliance and benchmarking tools further makes it difficult for fintech companies to improve customer satisfaction. There is a clear value proposition for the technology sector to improve standards of regulation, compliance, accountability, and transparency.

By adopting governance requirements specific to Gulf region’s technology sector, entities can be made resilient to match global standards, inform the business community on the regulatory changes in technology implementation, and raise awareness on the governance of the different business processes to build a strong business reputation, add value to the organizational growth, and contribute to the overall economic growth.

This session aims to provide information and best practices that support business development and growth.

1. Role of regulators for fintech companies: Regulator’s perspective
2. Understanding the challenges start-ups and small and mid-size fintech’s face in the initial stages of set up. E.g., Structures and processes required to set up businesses
3. Key practices fintechs and start-ups should be aware of, when setting up new businesses
4. Processes to acquire licenses, customer satisfaction and ethical business practices