The Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market is launching a new initiative to drive the development of intelligent regulatory technology (RegTech) tools to help artificial intelligence achieve regulatory context and understanding.
The move comes amid greater adoption of the new technology by financial services firms and other businesses.
The Open Regulation (OpenReg) initiative provides a “training ground” for industry professionals, RegTech companies, and the data science community to gain access to FSRA’s AI models, data, and research to create AI-enabled RegTech tools create, ADGM said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Without a regulatory context, AI applications will be limited in their potential to help financial services firms navigate the regulatory landscape. In this regard, OpenReg provides the regulatory context companies need to build their own AI solutions,” said ADGM.
The initiative “builds on the foundation of the previous FSRA project on digital regulation by offering interested stakeholders the opportunity to engage with us in advancing this important RegTech innovation.”
The UAE launches a series of strategies as the Arab world’s second largest economy embraces the digital economy and positions itself as a global hub for innovation.
In April, the UAE cabinet approved a strategy in which the digital economy will contribute 20 percent to the gross non-oil economy in the coming years.
The strategy aims to double the contribution of the digital economy to the UAE’s GDP from 9.7 percent to 19.4 percent within the next 10 years, Wam reported at the time.
“This is the first time a regulator has attempted to provide regulatory context in the form of machine-readable regulations and AI models,” said Emmanuel Givanakis, Managing Director of ADGM FSRA.
“By collaborating with industry and the developer community, and having access to the underlying data we used to create our own AI model, we aim to develop smarter AI and RegTech solutions that make financial regulation simpler, clearer and make it more effective.”
The new move comes as FSRA, the regulator of Abu Dhabi’s financial hub, continues to update and amend regulations to mitigate risk and make ADGM an attractive venue for local, regional and international businesses.
In September, she published guiding principles on her approach to regulating and supervising virtual assets to outline her expectations for the asset class and service providers in the industry.
FSRA also modified its capital markets framework and implemented significant improvements to improve the investment environment and boost growth opportunities in the emirate’s financial hub.
ADGM, one of the fastest growing international financial centers in the Middle East and North Africa, is part of Abu Dhabi’s efforts to diversify its economy and connect the emirate to the markets in the Mena and the economies of South and East Asia.
Updated November 29, 2022 12:46 p.m
