- The young, as well as tech-savvied populace providing the source of trades as well as get organized with a talent pool for FinTech companies.
- During the preceding a year back, had restricted few noteworthy landmarks for the Saudi Arabia’s financial arena, including the kingdom’s stock marketplace into the MSCI Emerging Market Index to sustained robust mandate for its Sovereign Debt bonds as well as Saudi Aramco’s record-breaker inaugural public offering prior to this month.
- Saudi Arabia’s stock marketplace — the chief in the territory, valued at an about $549 billion — sustained to progress its regulatory framework and is anticipated to permit the listing of foreign firms on its exchange in an attempt to boost further IPO activity.
Such progressions really develop the attempts and robust political scenario will be displayed by Saudi Leaders for commencing up the kingdom’s financial markets for globalized investors.
The agreement by Saudi Arabia’s Capital Market Authority (CMA) of the Financial Technology Experimental Certification to boost innovation in the domestic economy sent a clear message about the government’s intent to sustain FinTech innovation.
This affords a regulatory framework for the adoption of innovative technology in Saudi capital markets and pursues a similar perspective to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority’s (SAMA) sandbox methodology. It allocates new merchandize and technologies to be assessed under the regulator’s auspices to restrict the risks and is intended to accept applicants to acquire FinTech products, services and business models, and to test and utilize them within specified parameters and time frames.
However, it is a new ‘kid on the block’ that has numerous market participants excited: FinTech. While in the priorly a lack of infrastructure, talent, and supportive protocols meant that Saudi-born financial technology establishments favoured to relocate to the UAE when they needed to scale, hurdles in all three areas are aggressively being addressed, meaning Saudi Arabia could be on the threshold of a FinTech revolution.
Saudi Arabia’s financial watchdogs have the prospect to act as a decisive role in commencing the fintech start-up industry with measures such as governing sandboxes. These permit for small-scale live testing for new business models and enhance the trustworthiness of domestic regional start-ups with both investors and clients alike.
These are welcome initiatives because a common area of concern for investors in an initial-stage start-up firms is the regulatory certainty of the firms in which they are pondering investing. Feedback from firms who contributed in the UK regulatory sandbox revealed that taking part in such a programme afforded a degree of reassurance to investors through the oversight of the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the enhanced regulatory certainty participation provided.
FinTech innovation, start-ups and a expertise-based economy will play a pivotal role in Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s vision to renovate the economy away from its conventional oil-based arrangement and rebalance it into a more technology-powered, modern global superpower.
This is a critical step forward for a nation that has an anticipated 2.2 million young people aged between 15 and 19 who will be registering the job market over the forthcoming decade, and a huge prospect for the kingdom’s nearly 20 million young men and women under the age of 35.
As one of the most tech-savvy youthful populaces globally, Saudi Arabia is in crucial position to influence the digital competencies of this pool of talent. Indeed, mobile and internet access in the kingdom is anticipated to be at close to 100 percent — a substantial leap before the global average. This views the kingdom well to tap into its accessible tech competencies and become a front-runner in the digital age.
The expression of this year’s Future Investment Program promotional video entirely reviewed the spirit that is comprehensive via Saudi Arabia today: No matter how rough or tough, achieving the top is never enough.
The high-profile event, at which $20 billion valued of deals were signed, was a demonstration to the progressing leadership of the kingdom on the global stage and its flourishing appeal to global leaders, investors, thought-provokers and innovators.
It’s a philosophy that indicators the kingdom’s will to take on the future, from state-of-the-art technology to edges to substitute global-leading innovation and entrepreneurship. What is specific to the foreign observer peering into the kingdom is the nation’s potential to be converted from the largest exporter of petroleum in the global to a world-leading hub for technology and innovation.
