How Does MENA Benchmark on the Global Stage?

[Music] thank you to the one guy clapping I appreciate you hello everybody my name is Simon Taylor uh I run by day a newsletter called fintech brainfood tocom I also work for sardine the world's best fraud and compliance AI detection software so as we enter the AI Century I believe to capitalize on the opportunity of being the best Hub you need three things you need identity infrastructure Finance infrastructure and of course AI capability two out of those three are what I would Define as fintech because you cannot have money movement without having identity infrastructure even if it's analog now today I'm going to talk about the virging Hub you already have I'm standing here in ADF W and I am blown away by the energy and excitement and the warm welcome I think then the things you need to deliver on the AI future of fintech how other hubs Benchmark and then a couple of recommendations to close us out so you do have a burgeoning fintech hub but you also have an amazing amazing region that you're a part of and the UAE is especially is already investing in its its wider neighbors and regions in an incredible way but what blows me away about the demographics is in an aging world you have the best average age of population you have a digitally Savvy population who like video games who are young who are digitally aware and a massive investment in Tech infrastructure that is a unique position and of course uh our friends at BCG have predicted this will be the fastest growing region for fintech and financial services technology so this is phenomenal to watch and see and of course now you see the rest of the world starting to react revolute and newbank two of the world's biggest Neo banks have announced their Market entry but of course your homegrown Regional powerhouses are now expanding you do now have companies that are resonating in the anglosphere in Singapore that you're hearing about this is a hub that is starting to get on to two feet and stand with its chest back and see we have arrived but how do you become the best I think that's a fair question so I believe the thesis of the future is AI agents will need to move money and will need to transact to be valuable and in order to do that they need Finance infrastructure and identity infrastructure fortun Ely you're already positioning to be a global AI Powerhouse so the AI infrastructure will eventually come even though people are worried about it being slow but what comes next imagine you have an AI agent like a personal assistant that is booking your flight and you send to chat GPT or something like it hey Siri book me a flight please your AI agent will then process that request and say okay I'm going to take your credentials your identity from this secure bit of your device your locker then I'm going to look up a flight and I'm going to give it your passport and your personally identifiable information in a secure way so that we can book and pay for your flight and then we're going to store the tickets for your flight in your wallet hey book me a flight please okay sir here are your options I'd like this one booked paid for in your wallet you're ready to board the flight I want that future you want that future there's a few things we need your AI agent needs a secure place to live like your device you need a digital identity infrastructure that can permission that agent to do things on your behalf and then you need the ability to authenticate and transact and all of these things are being built but all of these things will need Innovation from startups and all of these things will need mandates and regulation in order to be able to succeed see a few photos being taken so I'm going to pause while you guys do that you got it digital wallets are what helpers manage identity and payments and this is a very uh Anglo Centric view of the world but what you're starting to see is everybody from Apple to visa to cl to Shopify to the banks themselves and now moving away from the account as the center of gravity to the digital wallet that stores my passport that stores my identity that stalls my agent fascinating this is where it's going but they need standards think of it like UAE pass but without the app that standard could exist anywhere so once you have uh identities on devices once you have standards you will unlock this future so fundamentally if you focus on identity and finance infrastructure that's how you get the nice things we talk about AI Commerce so how does mina and the UAE become the fintech hub for the AI Century first we're going to evaluate the existing hubs then we're going to give you a bit of a gap analysis this is one British guy's opinion that's my disclaimer um and a vision for what you need to do next in one British guy's opinion with a Blog that a lot of people read but you know turns out having an opinions and being British people still like to listen uh okay Hub evaluation the five factors to becoming a fintech and AI Hub are not surprisingly a good ecosystem Talent government support PR and mind share I'm going to go on about this one a lot and livability so for example San Francisco its ecosystem is undefeated if you want to meet a founder or investor it's the best place to be New York very strong London pretty good talent s San Francisco in the Bay Area undefeated you will meet just worldclass people there wherever you go but the government support is zero it is terrible they do what they do in spite of their government not because of it uh PR and M share pretty good New York does well and then the fintech and Finance sphere somehow people keep talking about London even though for the last four or five years as somebody who lives in London it's been like eh so that's a a real superpower and then of course livability um I'm not a big fan of the bay you've got to drive everywhere it's okay but people choose to live there because of uh lots of different regions now I think Hong Kong and Singapore are possibly the best metaphors for the UAE and the regions you have here because they're sort of five years ahead in developing a fintech ecosystem you would see that the uh investors and the angels and luck in both countries are really really strong but what I give them both a five out of five for is the government support the policy development the active promotion of hubs the active promotion of new regulations the rule Singapore just passed on dealing with scams I would highlight as world class the UK just passed a law and everybody talking about it a new role under the PSR it's it's not very good but the Singapore Model A month later is way better so I would say that the you need the ecosystem so that you generate the flywheel think about all of the people coming out of PayPal to build new companies once you can start telling that story things get amazing and I think you will get there but you're a few years away from having that happen just yet Talent funny how the Europe's mistol is expanding into mistol Silicon Valley to get more staff once you get the talent then they form the company they follow the capital who follows the talent and so on you've got to get these flywheels really really humming government support and enablement I'm giving the win here to the UAE because in the last four or five years how you guys have put together whether your investment support with your regulatory Innovation and with national infrastructure has become the case study especially around what addm has done with uh digital assets that you are the case study and I'm not saying that because I'm here I'm saying that because I would say to anyone in any room anywhere around the world it is the best but PR and mind share this is an area where I think really There's an opportunity because somehow London just keeps popping up and people keep talking about it and it's one of the best branded cities in the world even though living there is not what it used to be even though the investment is terrible even though the regulation has got a little bit slower these are all personal opinions I'm a very proud Brett you should come hang out and I'll happily make dinner for you um but what we're really really good at is putting guys on stage like me who say things and for some reason the world likes that how do you get more of that how do you tell the story more I have some ideas and then livability I think you know sort of where do you want to be when you're not working uh that's always the the key question so this is how I've benchmarked it um looking at the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia I got to say that your ecosystem and your investment side got to give you something very strong there Talent is the best talent in the world moving here I keep talking to people who are talking certainly from Europe uh moving in this direction government support unquestionable excellent could it go faster could it uh have a little bit more Doge energy possibly possibly it could go a little bit faster but that's always a tension that's always a tension to trade off but this is your opportunity is the pr and mind share the amount of uh sort of media I have seen here that I would not see anywhere else in the world is astonishing and this is where if you are going to retract the fly wheels we spoke about earlier There's an opportunity to kind of punch through and I have some suggestions on on how you might do that and then livability look it's hot here a lot but it has massively improved over the last decade and you can look at this uh studies of the expat population to to understand why it's becoming one of the most liveable places one of the safest places on Earth so it you can't really question uh question that at this stage and the reason I put the arrows here is because the trend is upwards but if you want to go from really good to great here are here are my suggestions create standards to place ID cards in digital wallets and I'm going to give this one weirdly to the US government um so nist has published a standard for the provision of identities into any digital wallet so if I wanted to have my wallet in my uh my identity in my fab one wallet or my acbd wallet or my neobank wallet I would follow that standard and I could provision a driver's license or a passport into that wallet that unlocks Innovation it really means that now the government doesn't have to top down do everything it can manage through the standards how identity happens build a framework for AI agent ownership and payments interestingly Australia has a legal framework for not just consumer data rights which cover open banking open finance and kind of data access from banking but any data that's held anywhere Central the consumer data right covers but here's the other thing they've just added they've also added action initiation this is a standard that allows AI agents to automatically switch your utility provider if an AI agent if software finds you a cheaper price somewhere else you can give it permission Under This legal framework to switch that on your behalf it is like having a personal assistant now of course there will be questions about how's that what happens if something goes wrong go read the standard there's a lot of thought gone into it make company creation digital how many companies have been created and are you measuring the formation rate of new companies because if you can collapse that then that would be phenomenal having just get rid of the paperwork get rid of the friction in setting up a company and try and bring down the cost wherever possible stripe Atlas is actually built by stripe it's a private sector thing but you literally click a few buttons and for $1,000 you've got yourself an LLC or a C Corp out of Delaware or Wyoming Estonia has a model here where you can do e residency and business setup imagine if I could be a resident of the UAE and set up a business digitally entirely digitally just clicking buttons yes okay there's laws why you might want somebody to come visit the country if I wanted to become a full Resident but Estonia has gone a different way so how how aggressive do you want to be on that Spectrum it's kind of interesting and then can you create an identity around those agents where they operate as a business and then last but not least create a national Target for digital only GDP and AI first comment and the thing I want to leave you is is tell the story with B2B creators influencers are not just for consumers they're for business audiences too please please subscribe to fintech brainfood tocom I'll shortly be releasing a 110 page slide pack on all of these thoughts and a lot lot more thank you very much [Music]