R.A.C.E - Launch of MFTA Sustainability

foreign [Music] hope you all are doing absolutely fantastic and great and as always it's always exciting to be here in adgn and see you all and most importantly everyone who's basically focused on one thing today with its sustainability so I'm namir Khan and we're going to be talking about fintech and sustainability together but before this I would like to thank Abu Dhabi Global markets for an exceptional Abu Dhabi Finance week and most importantly dedicating one whole day to sustainability and I would again as before you know ask you all for a big round of applause for adgm for dedicating a single day for sustainability now at the mean of fintech Association We Believe as a large one of the as the largest fintech community we started a journey here we believe that fintech is uniquely positioned to enable sustainable impact and to use technology to drive purposeful change and purposeful impact into an and embed this into our lives now as we did this we early this year started the sustainable fintech Alliance sustainable fintech Alliance is the Region's fintech community that is bringing together Global experts Regulators uh leading experts from all over the world Academia students everyone together and encourage open dialogue honest dialogue to where its action-oriented discussions towards what we need to do in order to enable sustainable impact and our drive and our race towards sustainable impact in terms of the United Nations sustainable development goals now as we did this as we started this journey one of the first things that we did is we focused on launching a full-blown full-fledged educational program this educational program was actually done in collaboration with London Institute of banking and finance adgm Academy Dubai International Financial Center and then with this we gave scholarships to 30 students in the region and outside the region now that tells you that we are enabling impact not just in the region but outside the region to educate on what sustainability is and how to embed sustainable impact into our organizations and as fintechs now as we did this for those 30 students we then enabled them to get first of its kind sustainable fintech leadership uh certification which was also launched as well that was one of part of the journey that we completed then after that the next chapter is that then we all came together to launch the first report for the region sustainability fintech report in this report we've again bring together all of our members our contributors and then focus on some what are some of the key insights that we have drive what are some of the key learnings uh complete guide on how to embed sustainable action into your organizations yeah now with this as we have launched this report I would actually like to thank as you know it's going to be a special thank you to uh Her Excellency Muriel and maheri who is the Minister of uae's uh climate change and environment who was exceptional basically and complete very open in terms of uh you know delivering impact and of course working with the private sector with the fintech community to allow us to have that discussion and to share our insights on how to embed impact into the community and The Wider region as well now with this in this report what we have also done is that we have taken a unique perspective because the unique perspective comes in uh by actually bringing together insights coming in from different United Nations units as well so in the over here we have unhcr so unscr has basically in this report very brilliantly highlighted the importance of what digital and financial inclusion does for refugees for example uh in terms of providing them with support um you know self-reliance and resilience and also of course to help them protect themselves as well so again a very important key sdg of un and United sustainable development goals and how we basically implement this into organizations and of course utilizing it while we embed this to enable support to defend sustainable development goals and causes as well now after this the other thing that we have done in this support which I again highly encourage you all to basically read is also on the lines of you know we have brought together all of our members who have shared their uh expert uh I would say insights in terms of how to embed sustainable impact and how to launch different products the how-to guide but when we basically talk about this how-to guide uh while you will read this our message is not of complacency that hey the fintech community is doing enough that's it no our message is to inspire you to do more because right now the journey has just started if you were to offset 51 billion tons of carbon emissions and to achieve our Net Zero goals we need to do way more than what we're doing so it is to inspire each other on how to embed impact and how to achieve that it's going to be a very collaborative approach that we have to take yes there is going to be a lot of stuff that needs to be done on regulatory push as well all the regulations that need to come in as well that was certainly common but we as organizations need to be extremely ready for that now over here I would actually also like to thank uh some of our contributors as well right such as uh adgm libf uh we have difc we have MasterCard we have checkout.com we have code based Technologies PPC m2p uh Cambridge University Center of alternate finance communic and of course uh unhcr all of them have played a significant role but again my message to everyone over here is that if we were to enable sustainable impact and utilize Financial Services in a sustainable way it is first and foremost a responsibility to understand what do truly sustainability is all about and implement this within organizations and last thing before I leave is going to be on the lines of first of all understanding that if you were to off you know if you were to basically take off 51 billion tons of carbon emissions uh carbon emissions the CO2 that we have out there is a product of what a product consumption and consumption is a product of spending and spending of what happens with financial rails therefore it is an extremely important role that we all will be actually uh you know playing in terms of embedding sustainable impact via our financial transactions we do have many players out there globally we're actually embedding impact into every single transaction that is how it starts as we say payments is the heart of fintech in this new modern world I would say payments is not just but payments is also the heart of enabling sustainable impact that's how we start and that's how we move towards other areas of sustainable impact as well now it's important to create a virtuous you know ecosystem business ecosystem that is not just for you know focuses and talks about sustainable impact as organizations but also embeds sustainability into our value chains and that is what the fintech community in this region is now focusing on and while we do that I'm sure we will all together make steady and slow progress not hopefully slow but really fast progress towards achieving our goals because we have really aggressive targets so everyone thank you so much for your time I really hope you enjoyed reading this report you can get this report it's going to be posted on our website it's going to be there on the adgm website as well it's going to be there on our LinkedIn uh profiles as well social handles for mina fintech Association Abu Dhabi Finance week and I look forward to seeing you all as we head towards cop 28. thank you all