Abu Dhabi Global Marketplace rolls out new digital lab

Abu Dhabi Global Industry is rolling out a new digital lab to market co-operation between large finance institutions and FinTech companies within a controlled platform supervised by regulators.

The lab “offers a secure and trusted digital environment where FinTechs can create and test solutions with finance institutions to address real life problems”, Abu Dhabi Global Industry chairman Ahmed Al Sayegh said.

“The digital lab will enable rapid prototyping and adoptions of digital solutions that can help businesses to overcome their pain points or tap new market opportunities to supply a secure platform that promotes collaboration,” Mr Al Sayegh said in his opening address to this year's FinTech Abu Dhabi event, which is being held online consequently of Covid-19.

The laboratory has been developed in collaboration with the Central Lender of the UAE and with key local lenders Primary Abu Dhabi Bank, Abu Dhabi Commercial Lender and Abu Dhabi Islamic Lender. It allows financial institutions to post issues that FinTechs can fix, under the joint supervision of regulators from ADGM and the central lender.

"It’s really version 2.0 of our very successful regulatory sandbox. It’s shifting from the analogue setting to a digital format," Richard Teng, leader of ADGM's Financial Services Regulatory Authority, told The National.

Moving the platform online has a number of gains, Mr Teng added. It "results in faster adoption" of systems, and it throws open up the task of solving concerns to a many wider global network of FinTechs.

"It enlarges industry," he said. "During the past, financial establishments relied a lot on in-house answers to bring about new technology, new development of services, and they realised that is normally an extremely slow procedure. In a Covid environment, where remote becomes typical ... the only method for delivery and for consumer onboarding will be in the digital format," he said.

The digital lab also "creates a very exciting marketplace where VCs [venture capitalists] can go in and also have a glance at new, exciting opportunities they can invest in", Mr Teng added.

ADGM will be issuing draft proposals and in search of industry opinions on a new framework to modify FinTech companies that are looking to work with finance institutions in areas such as for example open banking and start financing, Mr Al Sayegh said.

Regardless of the challenging situation as a result of the pandemic this season, the amount of tech start-ups at ADGM grew by 80 % to 291 and venture capital activity tripled from the last year, Mr Al Sayegh explained.