الرئيس التنفيذي لـ DFSA لـ CNBC عربية: منح DIFC تراخيص لأكثر من 100 شركة خدمات مالية جديدة خلال 2023

Transcript

00:00 So by way of example, in the past year we have licensed more than 100 new financial services

00:06 businesses in the DIFC. Last year was our busiest year ever for new licenses, 2022 was the busiest

00:14 year ever up until then, and this year we're already about 40 percent ahead of where we were

00:20 last year. So the financial centre is definitely growing, but more importantly it's always

00:27 deepening as well. So while it's great to have so many new businesses coming into the DIFC and

00:32 into Dubai, just as importantly the depth of the business is growing as well. So the business is

00:38 not just being written here and then booked somewhere else, the business is being written

00:42 here and a lot of the business is being booked here. So that gives you some real benefit to the

00:47 economy with deepening the core of the financial centre. But I think it will continue to grow,

00:52 we will continue to be the centre of finance for the Middle East.

00:56 On the other hand, what are the most prominent laws that you are working on at the moment,

01:00 and perhaps you will see the light of day in the coming period?

01:03 So as I said we put our digital assets regime in place in 2021, crypto in 2022,

01:09 we're already revising those. So one of the things that we've always done at the DFSA is perhaps

01:14 start conservatively. We may have started too conservatively with this, and so we've been out

01:20 consulting, engaging with our market, engaging with other stakeholders through a consultation

01:26 paper because we always go through a formal consultation process. And we're now relaxing

01:31 our rules a bit. So the major project we have underway just now is making our regime a little

01:37 bit more flexible, a little bit easier for people to come in, so we've relaxed it a bit.

01:42 Then the other thing that we're looking at is what to do with AI, for example,

01:47 artificial intelligence. That's a buzzword everywhere. Everywhere I go now I get asked

01:50 about AI. And with the other regulators in the UAE, the central bank, the Securities and

01:56 Commodities Authority, ESCA, we've issued some guidelines around AI, but we haven't jumped in

02:02 to regulate it. I think I really want to make sure we understand the benefits and risks of AI

02:07 before we jump in and regulate it, but that's on our agenda, and also decentralised finance,

02:13 D5. We're looking at those areas as well.