Risk & Regulation A CEO’s Playbook

Well, I've already been successful because no one fell and everyone got in their right seat. So, that's great. Well, welcome this afternoon. Um I, as I uh I was introduced, I'm Shereice Smith, global managing partner of Paul Hastings. It is a global law firm with 24 offices and over 1500 um lawyers there.

Um, I also served as a US regulator for about four years as chief counsel at the Federal Communications Commission and also served on two public company boards. Um, I was trained as a cyber and privacy lawyer with AI technology and crypto. But the good thing about today is I don't have to deal with any of those issues because I have an esteemed panel of people who are experts in this um this area. So, let's get started. So, we're going to talk about kind of, I think, the overarching um issues around uh geopolitical climate and market trends.

And Rola and Paula, I'm going to start with you. So, today CEOs are really having to deal with volatility as they're also thinking about kind of being strategic advisors. And that's not new. We've always had to do that. But I think it's the speed at which we're doing it now that's really been the challenge.

So Rol, I'll start with you. Um, how are you helping people stay ahead of things in in this uncertain kind of climate?

Well, uh, first of all, thank you very much and thank you for inviting me to be here today. I would say uh, as banks, we thrive on volatility. Um, and uh, this year, like every year we say this year hasn't been easy. We've had uh geopolitical uncertainties. We've had tariffs.

Um but we this is where you look at opportunities and for us it's finding these opportunities and helping our clients navigate through these opportunities to make sure that at the end of the day they're able to do their business seamlessly. So uh when we look at uh digitization when we look at AI um and as a bank we're investing a lot how can we embed AI more to basically bring more business for the for the for our clients when we look at uh digital assets. This is one area where our clients now are focused on investing part of their portfolio in digital assets and then the cross border with the tariffs. Uh we're able to navigate and and look at areas where our uh to help our clients through their supply chain and make sure that they're able to book business faster and more efficient. Well, we you know, we all tal all talked um behind um kind of the scenes about the fact that nimleness is key.

So, Paula, how are you thinking about nimleness in a stage where most of us are more comfortable with certainty and knowing what the rules are and knowing what the regulations are?

Yeah, that's that's definitely a very important word for us for sure. Uh I I grew up in in Latin America. So for me um the the volatility and the change is was always sort of a way of life. Wasn't really something that we we uh shied away from. Um and today as you see the uh the uh conversion of political and economic policies turning into a global geopolitical landscape, you really realize that for us what used to be the playground that we could go and invest almost anywhere around the world.

We are having to now think about things in a different way. So you have these polls now these geopolitical polls with two extremes. you have for example US and China dynamics and for larger countries um such as Brazil or India or Indonesia um they can stay uh they can stay their course they can they can defend themselves for lack of a better word but for smaller countries they're finding themselves in very difficult uh situations tough choices that they have to make so when we look at investments across the globe now we have to be more cognizant of the geopolitical backdrop that uh applies to that particular country and take that into consideration in a in a different way as we as we have in the past and as EM investors uh we are used to looking at risk from that lens and being nimble is one of the ways our gentum has been able to navigate the space. So you really you hit the nail on the head. That's absolutely true for us having the ability to uh leverage off of the information networks we have built for many many years in the emerging markets.

Um leaning on the expertise of our teams who have been emerging market um managers for a very long time. It allows us to actually find opportunities and uh and go places where it's probably not for the faint of heart or where others may not think that there are opportunities and and we have done very well that way by being nimble and being able to make decisions quickly and swiftly and react um to things that we see in the market as they're happening. But being nimble when you have organizations that are dealing with lots of geographies across the world, how as a leader do you kind of ensure that the institution knows where you're going, knows how to kind of focus on the various issues even though there are going to be a variety of laws and regulations that you have to navigate.

So for us, we're a smaller firm. I would think that that's true for very large institutions. That's very much a challenge that they face today. Um in our case we actually um have the advantage of being smaller so we can actually navigate that in a way that the team is always very well coordinated. Everyone knows what's going on.

The the the ability to uh coordinate with the various portfolio managers that we have both on the ground um and in New York allows us to really have a communication flow that's that's that's real time. So that challenge is not one that we've had to worry about too much.

So Rola, that teed you up perfectly because you are a bigger organization having to navigate. Sorry.

So how do you navigate that?

I was hoping you will not ask.

Well, look, I mean we're in 55 markets. So you can imagine uh we have um many regulators. So how do you align with all your regulators? And and this is where it's important in every market you have to align with the vision of that country and what's your niche. As long as you know what's your niche and you stay relevant to your client and uh and definitely as a cross crossber bank we the our purpose is to really serve our clients across all our geographies.

So we have to understand the regulations of every country and what can we do what we cannot do and how can we at the end of the day the whole aim is how can you make things more efficient more sp smoother for your client and be more creative. So that's a lot of work but we've been able to do it for over hundred years. So Richard, I'm going to bring you into the conversation um given the financial industry of course is navigating all of these um issues and you of all people have se seen it all. So we're here at Abu Dhabi Finance Week and I'm interested in kind of the strategic shift in capital deployment and partnerships in emerging regulations and how you're navigating this with the wide range of regulations. Well, so in many sense just going back to the previous question I whereas just reflecting about it um I think us as a very young organization in a very young industry we have certain unfair advantage right so for example we have about 6,000 staff globally uh today we have about 300 million customers globally but by and large we work in a very remote first decentralized fashion and that allow us to attract the best and brightest around the world to work with us and they can choose whatever venue they wish to work from right so that's the beauty of it so we are very privileged on that front and because it's a very high impact organization I know in banks rola rola I know her from way before so in banks you tend to have long meetings but our meetings are 15 minutes 30 minutes max decision to be made and we move forward right so we are moving at very different speed on that front right but going back to global deployment on on that um I mean in our space in the crypto case it is still challenging.

I mean now you have much more clarity coming out from the United States and US being the deepest capital market, largest economy saying that we will be the AI and crypto capital of the world. It just forces the rest of the global economies both large and small to rethink their positioning right but still um regulation move in some parts of the world at very very slow speed u unlike here in ADG right this is one of the forefronts in terms in terms of innovation and supporting very promarket regulation so we're very happy to call this our home we just announced that ADGM will regulate us on an end to end basis across the spectrum of activities including our global liquidity on that front. Um but you know it's very fortunate to work with regulators such as this but globally it is challenging because it's such a new technology. It's very difficult to change the old way of thinking because regulators are always trying to say force feed us into the old own model. For example, I I've been to regulatory agencies around the world and they said, "How how long do you need to do settlement?"

I said, "It's atomic settlement. It's instantaneous. We eliminate clearing and settlement risk." And that is baffling to them. Are you on T plus 2, T plus 3, T+ 5?

So, they can't reconcile certain things that's been happening uh using a totally different technology. So, there's a lot of education involved. Well, one of the things I will applaud you and your company for is understanding that sometimes regulators have to be taught as well. When I was a regulator, some of the best companies that we engaged in were comes whoa ones who came in to explain the technology so that regulation could actually marry with the technology involved. But talking about a technology, AI of course is, you know, the next great thing that we're all navigating.

And so, Bill and Andreas, I'm going to bring the two of you into this um a little bit. So, Andreas, how do you think about AI um and kind of the future of AI? And are we truly in an AI bubble?

AI is the big buzzword. When I think about AI, I must say I think about two things. It's data readiness and then comes AI readiness. So, what do I mean by that? In our company for instance we only deal with data and people.

So 160 plus years we obviously we deal with data we model got analytics and then AI components were there forever for 15 or plus years machine learning advanced analytics and all of this and suddenly everybody's talking about AI. I think people are overestimating the speed of AI. But they're also underestimating the impact. Why? In order to use AI effectively and efficiently, you need to be AI ready.

That means you need to first start with your data and tech foundation. The problem in our industry is that data is sitting all over the place. It's fragmented, dispersed in the organization, sitting on plenty of legacy systems.

Yes. And I always refer to it as a IT spaghetti. And now people try to create AI use cases. They all on a standalone basis and add complexity to the organization. It's not integrated.

They increase the data consumption and increase data consumption means increased cloud consumption mean increased cost on top of the already existing spaghetti. it spaghetti the cost doesn't go away. So we focused at a very early stage on changing the way we do our business because we reflected on it and said okay we have people and we have data. We got to have people with capabilities that embrace data.

So that data readiness was first we use the channel of what we call the sigma. So that risk insight that we bring not only into our company to do better decision making but also to bring it to clients risk insights to increase resilience. Secondly, we said eight years ago we said we need to think differently about technology. So we partnered with Palunteer. We're actually the first one in our industry vertical and together with them we created what we call the Swiss analytical data model.

So we think like a software company and that was the foundation for any AI use case with a proper governance framework and immediately all AI use cases have a quantifiable benefit otherwise they won't get approved and they really are integrated straight away into our data and tech infrastructure global integrated infrastructure and I have three things that I always say to people when you want to make AI higher success and the regulator by the way plays a significant role here. First of all is you need to anticipate as a leader. So you need to imagine something that's not here today. That's where a gentic AI kicks in because you start to reimagine really or every process and that's new. So you need to bring the people to the stage to reimagine to anticipate something that's not here today.

Number two, you need to have selfm motivation

because people always say it doesn't work. 80% of people or more say we don't want change. So you need to have self motivation. The third thing is you need to have inspiration. Inspiration because you need to take people along.

So you need to have good use cases and you need to engage proactively with regulators because as you reimagine you have internally the control functions that have to redefine to make it solid solidified foundation but also engage with regulators early enough because they have to approve models you know solveny models and whatever. So it's a journey. It will separate really the good ones from the ones who are behind. There's the hype, yes, but my recommendation is make it super concrete, tangible, and yes, experiment, but don't get carried away with all the experiments.

So Bill, I think that's a great leadin for you as you, you know, you have been kind of thinking about technologies and seen kind of various ways that companies should use it. How do you and kind of your company think about AI technology and trying to navigate something that as Andrea said doesn't quite exist yet, still in it its nent stage?

Well, I I I think as as you've said before is is that it's a new technology. It's kind of sweeping the world. If you want to sound smart, start with AI, right? So I I think that's that's really, you know, that that's kind of the hype side of it. You know, a few years ago, we decided to buy a company called Blue Dot, Blue Prism, and we spent a billion seven and and it was kind of my I said, "Look, if if we're going to stay in what we do, we're going to have to get very steeped in AI, ML, machine learning, robotic process automation, natural language processing.

All those things are coming at all of us at breakneck break neck speed. So our view was, you know, you can't just get a few licenses of automation anywhere or co-pilot or something, right? It just doesn't work. We have a large workforce, you know, close to 30,000 people and well, we had to have ballast, right? So when we bought Blue Prism, we got 1,400 people and we started deploying robotic process automation like crazy.

So we've installed 3,500 digital workers throughout our company. We think it saves us a couple hundred million dollars a year. And not that we laid off a bunch of people, but we just didn't hire as many as we we did in the past. And now it's the basis for we're putting in all kinds of agentic AI. So we're redeploying all these digital workers so that they have more reasoning so that they're broader.

They can do more complex tasks and you can get much more done much more quickly. But at the same time you need to make sure that you have the guard rails and and and the compliance. And I I was here last year and everyone was talking about AI then too. And I said, you know, those F1s, those cars, you know, they don't just have a gas pedal. They got to break, you know, and if you're going to survive, you better be able to handle both,

right?

And so we have something we call AI gateway. So we don't deploy AI without it being in our gateway. So it can't get out. Right? We don't want hallucinations or whatever else you want to call it where it brings you back false positives.

So, everybody really wants it and then it's like uh oh, right? So, we want to stay away from uh oh as as much as we can and and that's what we've done. and and more recently we we bought another company called Calisone that's very big into digital assets and cryptocurrencies and you know all of that is more technology that that that again that you have to take the time and you have to have patience you got to train people and teach people and motivate people and it's no different than in the other business process that you that you implement. So, Bill, I love the let's avoid uh ohos. So, Richard, talking about uh ohos's because everyone thinks, you know, crypto that is going to be the area where you see so much more fraud because of AI and other things and you've pushed back on that.

So, tell us a little bit about kind of how you're thinking about AI and avoiding fraud and risk and kind of the risk balance of this great technology that's important, but yes, there could be oo's. So, so if you reimagine the future world right especially in the financial services sector actually the middle office middle and back office functions of more financial institutions can be replaced redesigning using AI and blockchain right so you think about it things like reconciliation accounting clearing settlement right on that front so it's not only about data infrastructure which you make a great point on that front but it's also about process flow right so people think of AI to say that okay we have now this manual process, how do we AI this particular pro process but it's not that it's how do you look at the entire flow of activities and is there a way to streamline it using technology and that's where the key benefits coming through right so so we've been we have used AI quite extensively through our organization from things like you know very basic things like customer service consumer boards to fraud detection uh all the onboarding of customers in terms of documentations that they submit. uh you know going through tons and tons of those documentations identifying scams and frauds of false documentations on that front to things like transaction monitoring to market surveillance function to our operations front um to even detection of uh potential wallets that are that are challenging and uh has problems right but also on the X ent basis trying to prevent scams and fraud from happening right Um just this I think this year we help our users avoided fraud and scams close to 14 billion dollars right uh because it's happening around all around the world. So we use technology on that front to fight to fan off all these activities and that's the only way that you can do it going forward. Right.

the the other o moment is that people I mean going back to the point that was made just now um nowadays we use we do we use AI coding for about 40% of our coding activities right and that probably will go up a bit more but there are certain things to watch out for uh on the AI front for example hallucination

is still a big problem right so if you look about cases in Australia where Australian agencies retain consultants s and I think the data coming out is wrong because it's just the AI hallucinating and uh Lindo will know this case law that's been hallucinated out right no such case law happens in the past but they are coded as case law that happens right so that is a risk that you have to bear in mind using AI so they are good for certain things they're not so great for other things right so you have to gut against some of those risk coming true

well Richard as long as you keep hiring people like Paul Hastings, you don't have to worry about that. So, Andreas, I saw you biting at the chomp to talk about risk and compliance and AI. So, you had something to add.

I just want to come back to the point. I mean, you said the process is important. Yes, I fully agree. But still you got to get your data right because and and we were competing with one of our um industry clients you know and we said okay let's use the same AI use case and let's have a race so we use the same uh line of business product area it's construction and engineering and we said okay let's compete now. Let's try to see what productivity gains can we generate.

So we started at the same time. It took them literally 4 months to gather the data. So they had the data then data cleansing on top making it usable for the AI use case took them four months.

Can you tell me which firm so I don't use that firm going forward? no names. We start at the same time and because our data was organized, it took us three to four days. So that was the advantage already. Then we went into the process mapping.

We identified 25 subrocesses that were not even documented. People were using 14 different applications and it could take them up to three weeks to issue a quote because 90% of all unstructured data people are dealing with emails, handwritten notes, etc. That company was now aware because they were still trying to gather data. Once we were there, we shortened the time from 3 weeks to up to a day. and we reduced the use of applications from 14 to five less than five and we had productivity gains of 80%.

So after 4 months this other company obviously also then generated the benefits probably not as much because they still had to live with the unorganized data etc. So that's the kind of thing I mean process yes but get your data right first you know that's that's the point I want to make.

So Paula a little bit we talked a little bit about the risk associated with this so much of this is going to be used for compliance type issues. How do you think about kind of the use of this and what risk are associated with using it from a compliance perspective?

Well I think for us the user case is slightly different. So from an investment perspective, we uh typically have to go through a lot of data. Uh when you're analyzing an investment, um there's tons of information that you look at. So processing of information at a faster speed is important which helps to relieve the analyst to be able to do sort of more value ad functions. Having said that, one of the biggest challenges we have is again to your point of organizing the data is not all data are created equal.

Meaning there's some data that is private data and there's so data that sits in the public sector, right? So if it's in the public domain, then how you use AI and what you use it for has one set of of of guardrails. If it's in the private domain, you're talking about a whole different type of guardrails and and risks and what you have to think about. We also look at AI when we look at our analysts in that we want them to use it but we don't want them to outsource their brain. Right.

Right. So we we need them to continue to be engaged in the entire analysis process. So uh there's there's aspects of AI tools out there that basically want to sort of automate the whole thing. We don't want that. So I sometimes do the analogy of driving a uh a fully automatic or a stick shift.

We want our our analysts to still know how to drive a stick shift, to have a feel of the car, to have a feel of the engine, to still understand what it is that they're doing and not completely rely on on on AI for for everything that they're doing. So, we we're we're still tackling that. And I think that there, you know, there there's already lawsuits happening in terms of how the data is used by the LLM um with with many of the large LLMs being sued in terms of how they're what they're doing with the data. Um and I think that the regulators I agree with with members of the panel that I think there'll be regulatory um uh uh legislations to be passed on this but I think it's going to be hard to implement as well because the LLM's there's this race to make them all more efficient and better and to do that you need data and so then the use of the data becomes sort of this this this need that feeds the machine and then you know how do you how do you actually control that so I think you have to be vigilant I think you have to have internal policies and guidelines on how you use it. And I I talked to many colleagues of mine in the industry and they'll say, well, you know, we we banned, you know, chat GPT.

We don't want analysts using those kinds of things. But they go and do it anyway and don't tell you, right? So, you still have to I mean, you still have to uh uh I I I sit on one of the a board in um my alma matter or Colombia and one of the challenges they had in the beginning is they said, "Well, we're going to ban this from students. We want them to use their own brains as they write. But then eventually is so they change course and they say, you know what, we're going to let them use it.

And what we're going to do instead is teach them how to validate whether the data is correct or not. Are there hallucinations? Are there you know how accurate is the output? So instead of fighting the trend, allowing the use of it, but being being trained in how to analyze the output so that you understand what you're getting. So I I think from our perspective it definitely has a lot of value but you have to really be guided in how in how you use it.

So the regulators another kind of big issue that they are continuing to struggle with that you all are dealing with are cyber security risk and particularly now that the boards can be personally liable people are much more concerned than they used to be. So Rola, Bill um and Richard I wanted to start with you guys. So Rola, I'm going to ask you, how do you think about some of the cyber security issues from a bank perspective? I mean, again, you guys have had to deal with this for many, many years, so you're so much more sophisticated than a lot of entities. What are some of the best practices that you would like to share with this group today?

Well, um I sit on some of our internal bank boards and um cyber security I think it's everybody on everybody's mind from all the way from the board to top down. Um it's very important that board members, management and across all the employees really get thorough training of cyber security. uh because you know it's it's every day it's around us and not only the employees but also how do you make sure that you warn your clients to make sure I mean there's online digitization and as banks more and more move to digitize in their internally the front and the middle and the back end you're going to have more cyber security risk. So as a bank, as any financial institution, you need we constantly invest in our systems as well as well as constantly ensure that we internally we have the trainings as and raise a lot of awareness for our clients because you will have a lot of issues if they're not properly made aware of the risks.

Well, you you nailed something and that you said it's not just kind of the board. is from the board all the way down, but it's also outside of of your own company. How do you think about the vendors that you use and kind of thinking, you know, interacting with them and ensuring that they too are thinking about these issues?

So, we uh I mean, we assess our vendors. We have a very thorough process of assessing the vendors. It's like uh on the way we onboard vendors is no different than onboarding our clients because also there is also that risk and element in the vendors when especially uh when how you integrate the systems uh with them. Uh so annual uh thorough checks on them to assess and to ensure that you know uh we're we're very comfortable with the way they run their systems internally and uh and h and their trainings on cyber security

and as we all know and those in the audience know that regulators don't differentiate whether it's you whether it's your vendor you're still responsible so it becomes a very important part of this. Now, Bill, you had a very different and interesting take about um cyber security in terms of the board and the fact that activists are starting to use that as an entree and an entry point into well, is your board solid? Should we have someone on there? Can you tell us a little bit about your interaction with various boards on this issue?

Well, everybody's afraid of it, right? So, so including them. So you you know you have to have the you know the proper you know you got to go talk to Swiss Free and get the proper DNO insurance and and you have to be able to uh to to really articulate what it is that you do. You know we we have had u you know we run big data centers. We run 165 different nodes around the world.

So, you know, we and you get hacked really lousy, you know, really lousy. And then, you know, you get these bad guys that ransomware, right? So, they send you bad notes and they want you to meet on the dark web. I tell all of you the dark web sucks. So, you get to go into some room, you know, and these bad guys and they start off at $10 million or whatever.

No. How about five? No. How about two and a half? No.

The answer is always no.

It's always no. You know, well, if we get them down like under 25, we we're pretty we're pretty generous. But so you're in there and you know, you're trapped. But what we do as soon as something happens, we go to our customers and we tell them,

yeah,

you know, it's not something that's right there that's we're, you know, it's some server that's in some backwater somewhere that had 10y old data on it and they hacked it. But, you know, you got to tell your customers, you got to be upfront. You got to tell them, here's what we're doing and here's when we're going to do it and and and we're going to protect you. And so I I think it's it's that upfrontness

that gets you through these things. And is it No, it's not pleasant.

But at the same time, that's our job, right? It's our job. It's our board's job. You can't run around go that really helped, you know.

Well, for this for anyone on the panel, I'm interested about this because more, you know, there was a time where boards didn't get trained, you know, on cyber security. Now it's almost kind of mandatory. How are you interacting with boards as you're training? So Richard, I'll maybe ask you and anyone can jump in. Is what are you telling the boards about kind of what you should be doing and what they should be thinking about for cyber security?

Well, I think training is one thing is about appreciating it and understanding the vulnerabilities and risk, right? So I do think that many boards underestimate the risk involved. uh if you think about it every access point, every staff, every terminal is a point of vulnerability, right? So I think many boards may not appreciate that. So so for our just just take for instance our company, right?

So what we do is we put through all the staff including board members uh on a quarterly basis through training on on the different areas of risk including on cyber security risk and they have to pass a test,

right? Um, and we have people masquerading and sending emails, sending text messages to our staff, right? Uh, with the aim of getting them to click it, right? And if they fail it once, they get a severe warning. If they fail two or three times, out they go because they introduce a lot of vulnerability into the system, right?

So I think one of the I think many of you might not know this but one of a very popular emerging trend now is people masquerading as recruiters and say that well you know I have this job for you can um your profile looks right exciting prospects you know we pay high compensation um can we talk and then we start talking and they say by by the way can you click this link join the video stream and we can talk and that introduced a lot of vulnerability and they are always evolving, right? So, how do you always keep ahead of the curve? So, you have to be in the marketplace to understand all these emerging trends that can bring risk to not only the the company but to the board directors in terms of liabilities. I'm afraid many of the directors may not fully appreciate the risk organizations are going through. Andreas, I was going to say, and you of course get all of the calls about kind of these risks, and how do you think about kind of your um assessment of what boards need to know and how you as an insurance provider are thinking about what the board members are doing?

I think the tricky thing is if you ask people about their exposures, a lot of people don't know if they're honest. So I said, okay, insurance and reinsurance, how does it work? It only works when you really have an understanding of your exposure. Then you quantify it and then you then you can model it basically and provide insurance and reinsurance capacity. We struggle to get one answer for instance when we asked what is the worst case scenario.

That's what we ask continuously because we need to know what's the worst case scenario. Again, it comes to the point of anticipating, imagining something that's not here today, but that will happen most probably. We asked all the big tech firms. We didn't get a clear answer. So, we created our own view on uh worst case scenarios.

The numbers were so big and people said, "Nah, it's not never going to happen." Then we had the crowd strike incident. That was pretty close to our worst case scenario. And since then people accept this as something normal and these things are becoming so big that it's not something that can be solved by one party. Yes, you can have the frequency type of losses that you can solve but the big catastrophe the peak risks I think that's a public private partnership approach.

You got to segment very carefully what's critical infrastructure for instance, banks,

health care system and I'm not talking about airports and ports etc. So critical infrastructure needs to be protected. We are the one of the top five providers of reinsurance capacity to the industry but we could be doing more but we cannot because we cannot expose a single balance sheet was just accepting risks that we don't really quantify. So that's why we said re increasing resilience is creating the awareness. We can bring data to the table to help you understand your exposures because our data and data analytics can help you to work with it and increase your own resilience before you think about risk financing your exposure.

Yeah. And then we can come to the party as one element of the solution. So it's a tricky one. So we also train our board and our employees but um it's a long long journey.

Well the final few minutes we're going to talk very quickly about digital banking and fintech. So Rola and Richard we're going to end with the two of you. Rola as you've been thinking about crypto and digital assets. What how do you should the kind of the people in our audience be focused on those issues in the next six months to 12 months because there's nothing we can't think past that time with things changing so quickly. Well, I would say it's an asset class that is here to stay.

So, it's very important that we all understand it. Uh we're seeing demand from the younger generation. They're following crypto and some of the other generation also they're interested maybe 1% they would want to invest. So, we have to cater for it. But it's very important that you know there's that deep understanding of how the market behaves because it is very volatile.

So we as a bank I mean we ourselves we've had our training in digital assets. We have our digital asset hub based in the UAE. We have the zodia market zodia custody here in ADGM and uh and what has helped us because the regulations have has been very advanced in the UAE. So we were able to move ahead and open here. Um and uh we cater for institutional clients and soon we're going to cater for our individual and consumer clients.

Well, we are lucky enough to be in a market that is so advanced on these issues and we're, you know, happy to be here. Richard, you the final word. What's the one thing that you would like to leave this audience um um on on digital assets and crypto? Well, the important use cases if you look at stable coin usage has tripled this year with greater regulatory clarity. Crypto payments has skyrocketed.

We went from 12,000 merchants on our platform supporting Binance Pay to 21 million just this year alone. So, you can see all the strong different use cases of crypto and stable coins. Uh tokenization is the future is another key usage of the crypto technology. So, you're going to see all this utility coming through in a very strong fashion. So rapid adoption is here to stay.

So Richard, Bill, Rola, Andreas, Paula, thank you for joining us on this panel. Linda, we kept in our 45 minutes. Please join me in in thanking them all for a rousing um interview today. Appreciate it.