Building a Career In Abu Dhabi's Financial Industry

[Music] good morning your excellencies um it's uh there's still a few people left which is good um guys we still have an audience which is either good or bad but uh know inshah it will be a very good session uh thank you for for attending my name is Yassin biti I'm one of the senior directors here at adjm Academy it gives me great pleasure and an honor to to be here uh and to introduce Ryan Taylor from brevan Howard and Hassan alfran from alfran um a name synonymous within the region um a name that we all know of know and those who have lived here for a long time have literally grown up with so uh welcome to the stage I'm honored thank you um today we're going to talk about how to offer practical insights into launching a growing career in Abu dhabi's Financial economy and Market sector yesterday were you both here yesterday you both attended you saw the launch our chairman talking about how Abu Dhabi has grown um the people that are visiting Abu Dhabi for the first time um it's a dynamic place to be it's a dynamic place to be in um so I have questions for you which I which I'll sort of start right now but briyan I know this is something that is close to your heart as well let's get the the boring stuff out the way the legal stuff um in terms of the regulatory environment can you offer insights into the legal framework and regulations governing the financial industry that are set by the Central Bank um and also within adgm as well knowing that you your your organization has recently moved here as well you say that's the boring bit I'm one of my titles is group head of compliance for brv Howard so I you know it's part of my job so I it's very important um so I very first time I came to Abu Dhabi was the very first Abu Dhabi Finance week which was three years ago now um and the rationale for me coming was because we decid we were going to set up something in the region somewhere and we needed to decide where we were going to go um we came to Abu Dhabi um Alan Howard owner of brev Howard had already been here he had met the leadership and he was phenomenally impressed and so he said you need to go to Abu Dhabi I'd never been to Abu Dhabi before so um it was it was a hell of a learning experience and what better how many years ago is this now this was three years ago so two to and a bit or whatever but yeah it was the as I say the first Finance week forever you're going to come to Abu Dhabi come during Finance week and with the Grand Prix and everything if it's your first experience it's a wonderful experience to have because is phenomenally busy um but you will meet everybody um in in and around so uh I came I was blown away I met the the adgm team I met the FSR when we're talking about regulators um and we decided we were going to well it was Alan's decision not mine that we were going to open up in Abu Dhabi um so that was the 16 no that was in November then because it was before the the um before the Grand Prix moved um and we then decided we're going to open up a business here we launched the application on the 16th of December I'm getting to to to the regulation um and and we were then fully licensed and operational on the 1st of February and the speed and turnaround of that was phenomenal and was a ring and endorsement of what the leadership has done here in Abu Dhabi itself because all of the relevant parties all work together in order to succeed um in relation to our application which for which we were very grateful um but it it's synonymous with the reason why we're here which is there's a real Vision um as to what Abu Dhabi needs to be uh what it is what it needs to be and what it will become in the future and part of that is is um creating a phenomenal uh opportunity within finance and only having been here for two and a bit years uh myself the the changes which I've seen in that time are just phenomenal um and almost Beggars belief but what you have now in Abu Dhabi is an absolute um ecosystem of what the world's Global Financial markets actually are um and so you have the asset managers such as ourselves who increasingly coming here in size not that many of the size which we've got but that's because we've got first mover Advantage I think but lots and lots of people are coming in size you've got all of the service providers be it the law firms um the accountants firms the administrators um and you've got the the the banks who are increasingly also moving here in size as well and that is illustrated by the fact that the adgm had to move just well not move but increase in size purely from the AL Mar Island to obviously Aim so they've increased 10 times in size from a land mass perspective and some people are thinking wow that's that's never going to be full up uh I think it will be and it's a question of time as to which is the next Island which the adgm will take over but but in answer to your question very long answer to your question um the reason why we're here is because of the ecosystem which is built it's because of The Regulators it's because of the um Dynamic approach which is taken by by the adgm the FSR uh the regist um the fact that you have English law here and everything else and is one of many fact factors but it's one of the most important factors as to why we've we located here but also why we've grown here so in the in the Clos two years now that we've been established we've gone from me as effectively the first employee to over 100 employees um we have a floor in one of the towers we're looking for more floor space because we're looking to double our Footprints here um and the reason why we can do that is because of the opportunity set which is here um which I'm sure we will come to in your course but excellent thank you thank hammed our chairman will be happy with the all the good things that are going on in terms of the regulation Authority which is CEO of so it's good to hear that this has all come together very uh quickly and smoothly uh because certain changes can can obviously take a long time and I know brev Howard also has International offices around the world as well Hassan from your side as a wellestablished family business are there have are there challenges that you've seen in setting up the business and how your business has changed from maybe first place or first store to to to where you are today sure I think as a as a private sector in malati business we need to recognize the importance of of actually firstly acknowledging that there's going to be quite significant disruption with a lot of thei technology that we're seeing so you know the kind of skills and the expertise that were nice to have you know two three years ago are now absolutely essential so so we have to think about constantly what are we doing internally firstly to upskill ourselves you know we can't expect to lead uh I would say the business during such a such a changing rapid digital environment without developing key key competencies and key knowledge ourselves and actually bringing on board the right skill set to be able to guide us through this and making sure that we are training our talent especially our imarati talent to be able to to have minimum core competencies to deal with uh you know with the changing environment I mean I'm I'm a big advocate of of getting uh certifications you know whether it's the CFA whether it's the frm and we're keeping a very close eye actually working with a number of Institutions to actually uh ify some of our some of our talent and Andi in particular uh if if you don't prepare yourself for this for this incoming disruption and potentially the benefits of it you know if if you if you take on board the benefits you know the reduction in expenses the turbocharging of of your core competencies you risk being left behind and you risk being uh being I would say negatively impacted by the lack of you of your ability to to take on some of these Technologies not to put you on the spot but you mentioned the development of Mr Talent which again is is very very close to all of our hearts here um regardless of the organizations that you work in are you able to share any examples that you can think about where you've taken any MRT talent and sort of walked them through and guided them and developed them through the pipeline within your organization sure we uh we have a we have apart from yourself of course we have a we have a non non for-profit um I would say banking Institute you Alan training banking Institute and one of the the pillars that we're trying to set up within the institution is to develop uh key competencies in fintech you know how can we take our traditional Core Business offering how can we uh how can we adapt some of the technologies that we've seen around the world and how can we train our imarati I would say skills or our amarati candidates to actually rather than having to rely on people outside of of the OE with various expertise why don't we have them Drive the change why don't we have them change or or adopt some of these Technologies one of the the nice I would say k tools that we're working on internally in Al [Music] foran Exchange in particular is that we deal with a lot of unbanked customers people that for instance sometimes struggle with with basic basic U I would say uh spoken literacy you know they they struggle a little bit with with digital technology uh they they may struggle to to type you know into into keyboards so with with the help of some of our imarati U candidates we're working to develop an AI tool that will actually simplify the entire remittance process so it's really as simple as you know you pick up the phone you hit the the I chat bot and you speak to it say I want to send you know x amount of money where do you want to send it I want to send it to you know to this country to this individual and that's all without really having to to actually input any kind of key data into the uh into into the app so they're helping with the user experience AB a sort of a backend but also you're giving you're empowering them to develop that to make a difference abely make a change the beauty of some of this some of this upcoming AI technology is that you don't necessarily have to be a coder yourself you know you can work with a with the tool to actually help you achieve the required uh development in the back end whereas you spend the majority of your time focusing on optimizing that customer experience excellent excellent and I know this topic of AI is close to your heart as well I know it's something that you hold very closely to your chest in terms of emerging trends that you see within your world within the financial sector maybe Ryan I'll I'll come to you as well in your world as well what what what are they where have you sort of where were you yesterday and where are you today and where do you think it will be tomorrow you have to recognize uh the uh the positive the positive potential or say or the kind of uplift you can get from deploying a lot of AI tools you know I can I can bore you to death on on on the benefits that you get on on efficiency and speed and accuracy and really amplifying your core processes you know you have to start by focusing on on your on your core core processes you know from from the backend operation to to the customer engagement so really finding ways to actually optimize and and really magnify what you're currently doing any any kind of I or or or machine learning uh capabilities have to be built on built on solid processes so so really it's us going back to our graph to saying okay are we doing things in the optimal way or is their area for us to improve and working with the with a with aot large language model and developing our own our own I would say U functionalities uh that are supported by these models and and you know I take on board some of the some of the conversations we had prior to me um you know sitting sitting with the gentleman here that you have to be willing to make mistakes you have to have to recognize I that you you are going to hit a lot of walls even even the most sophisticated large language models eventually will get to the point whereby they can no longer compute Beyond a certain point without getting very significant uh levels of Errors so you have to be ready to to experiment you have to be willing to to lose money in the process but ultimately taking those learnings and transforming that into something that is eventually workable and scalable we have as the academy we've had a lot of opportunity to work with Ray Dalo um and you saw the launch and he talks a lot about making mistakes um he wasn't born into the money he he made a lot of mistakes before before he got to the position that he was Ryan not mistakes that you made not mistakes Ryan you're going to have to compete now not to say that you're it was a mistake you good luck but going on what U Hassan has just just talked about is there anything sort of in your world that you you can talk about in terms of Trends yesterday's Trends today's Trends and where the organization that you represent is moving forward in that area yeah sure so 100% agree technology is is the way of the future AI is something which you either Embrace or it will destroy you um uh but that s makes it sound like a threat it's not it it's something which people need to enh use to enhance their skill set their opportunities um and we look at the same way as an organization ation um so we have an AI working group which has constituent members of all of the relevant teams be it trading be it research be it compliance uh legal risk Etc not just to assess what we can do from an investment management perspective which is obviously Central to what we do but how we can also improve our finance function our compliance function our legal function but what we're being very careful in is to try to minimize the mistakes because when we make mistakes it's not our money it's clients money and we don't like to lose our clients money so we're using it as a tool um just like many other tools to enhance what we do and to help facilitate what we do um what we won't do is we won't leave AI to go and make the investment decisions on its own because that at this point in time would be stupid and we don't want to be stupid so we use it as a tool we use it as a data set and we're increasingly um making sure that all of our employees are cognizant of that tool and the resource available in relation to it and and are using it to enhance their own uh productivity excellent excellent so we've talked about technology we've talked about sort of the history and and things like that so in terms of this ever changing Marketplace that we have and everybody wanting and vying for the same position that organizations open up to um in terms of challenges that you see uh Hassan maybe in your organization from the competitive job market to culturally adapting to many many areas but also managing that work life balance that all organizations right now are talking about um how how do you how do you see this how do you circle into those three areas there from from your your area and your role as a CEO work life balances is one of the things that uh I think U you have to really delve quite deep into right so long as so long as you're clear on the direction that you're going that that the work that you're doing is is making a uh I would say an impact on the economy uh and on people's lives you know unless unless you've got real purpose into what you're doing then then you know how do you get up in the morning and how do you incentivize yourself to do the things that you like to do so so having having meaning having meaning I would say U and having a clear Direction and vision uh that's really consistent with your values I think is very very important and also making sure that U that whenever we we we start the year I would say with the you know with the with a new strategy and a new budget or a new New Vision that that we bring people along along along the way with us you know I like to I like to create environments or ecosystems for for people to you know to thrive and and communicating that I think earlier on um you know is actually quite important for for bringing people along along the journey with you U and what we do really impacts the the lives of of millions of peop around the world I mean you know had it not been for institutions like us and many many foreign exper workers would not be able to send money safely and securely to to their to their families overseas uh we we follow very closely a lot of the trends and changes that that happen globally and it's incumbent upon on us I think to to prepare ourselves for that change one of the big concerns that we see with with AI adoption in particular is that it it's going to make a lot of traditional uh jobs essentially become redundant so so a how are we training and upscaling our people to be able to go through that change and B and for those that are going to be left behind you know what are we going to do to try to help them to actually reintegrate into their economy into the economy either this economy or their economies back home in a seamless way so while while there is significant importance in adapting to to the to the changes it's also important to recognize that we have a we have a moral obligation to rescale the the people that will otherwise be losing jobs excellent thank you now when we were prepping for this you said that your wife said you don't have a work life balance but in terms of your organization Ryan that like you said you've been here for the last couple of years but as a multinational organization in terms of culturally adapting to the the the landscape of this region how do you go about that what is it that brev Howard does that makes it so different maybe from other organizations that somebody wanting to work coming to work looking to apply to work within this Market would want to come and work there this is not a plug for brh how there is just a a question there um so we very much want to the reason part of the reason why we're here is to be a partner with Abu Dhabi um and to help develop the financial sector for ourselves and and also for Abu Dhabi as well so what we've been looking to do is is partner up with organizations such as the adjm Academy um with some of the local universities we recently ran a um a an internship program where we had uh 10 interns from myyu and Khalifa University who who came in and they did a phenomenal job and um they learned a lot and we learned a lot from them two of those interns are coming back to our graduate program which we're running uh locally here as well again we have a global program but we're we're looking to do a local subset of that as well um and and a really important part of that is exactly the point you're raising which is understanding the local culture um we'll only ever be able to do that properly if we have mrtis um and other GCC Nationals are working and and be fully um embedded within our organization we will become a stronger Organization for that and hopefully we can also contribute something to the adgm and Abu dhab as a whole as well by by training people um in what we do so that they can use that to further their own careers and obviously help develop the financial sector here too excellent last question I'm conscious of time so in terms of next steps and career Pathways we talked about continuous education which from our side it's it's very close to our hearts if I was going back to a young Hassan before he left for University in the UK and a young Ryan who before he joined the bank of England on the internship program what would what advice would you give give to yourselves if you were now looking back and thinking right I'm going into this particular area this particular industry I would say feed your intellectual curiosity without fear anything that you find you know that interests you or things that perhaps you know you don't feel that you're you know you know enough about just feed it feed it that would be the big feed the Mind feed the mind yes yeah be curious absolutely excellent Ryan I to move to Abu daab sooner the um it's a fair point you take every opportunity which you which presents itself to you um sees see sees those opportunities and run with them um what I would say though is that it's different to our day I think certainly my day I'm older than you um there is so much opportunity and information available now uh be it's online through AI through all of these other um technological solutions which simply wasn't available in my day so take those opportunities grasp them run with them make yourself a better person excellent gentlemen unfortunately we're out of time I know we could talk a very we could talk forever with regard to this amazing topic uh your excellencies ladies and gentlemen thank you uh for for listening gentlemen thank you for your time um we talked a lot we talked about empowerment we talked about cultural diversity we talked about thirst for knowledge and having that thirst for knowledge as well in terms of wanting to come to this sector but I think also it's a passion and desire that you need to have to work and you work very hard to to get the results that you fully deserve uh Ryan Hassan thank you very much thank you [Music]