Ep. 96: Amir Tabch - Tapping Into FinTech in the Middle East

Contact Amir Tabch:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amir-tabch/


FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTMitch:
(00:00)
 Welcome back to Count Me In, IMA's podcast about all things
affecting the accounting and finance world. In this special new
episode, my co-host Rouba dives into the world of FinTech in the
Middle East region through an elaborate discussion with Amir
Tabch. Amir has close to two decades of experience as a finance
professional advisory board member for multinational companies in
various FinTech and wealth tech initiatives. This conversation
features the state of the sector in the region, and Amir explains
how finance and accounting professionals can leverage these
technologies to better support their organizations. Keep
listening as we head over to their conversation now.

Rouba: (00:47)
I mean, you're someone who's acquired a successful career mainly
because of your ability to read the trends and the patterns with
passion. I mean, looking at the chart, I remember it, one of the
stories was that whether it was your wife's contraction monitor
or a financial chart, you have an eye for seeing the patterns
behind the, when they manifest. So you pride yourself on looking
past the complexity to see the certainty. How does one develop
such an outlook, especially at a critical time, like now where
God knows where the global economy is headed and trends are being
accelerated or even annihilated , in some cases overnight?

Amir: (01:26)
Well, as much as I'd like to claim that identifying trends and
patterns and forecasting is an inherent skill, it really isn't.
Of course, on the other hand the creation is. Now there are
essentially a lot of things that can take credit for being
responsible when it comes to analyzing these prices and trends
and patterns either when one's inspecting them in isolation or in
totality. So, first of all, when it comes to looking at trends
and patterns, it goes without saying that these analytical skills
need to be honed. So one has to be in touch with market
realities. We have to also look at human behavior industry
changes, social and economic forces, and no amount of experience
in the industry can make up for constant and consistent research.
To be ever updated and in touch, not just with the events they
can place in our industry, but all other events, whether it's
culture, whether it's fashion. And the point I mentioned earlier,
which is inclination. So being inquisitive by nature allowed me
to always look beyond the final results and really go into these
matters of causation behind those results. That being said, all
who believed that being a man of numbers, someone like me, boring
is not really accurate,  To be able to analyze these trends
and immediately place the ones that are not in tandem with the
market environment, which requires an extremely creative bent of
mind. You have to be able to think outside the box when
predicting matters of extreme relevance. And one also needs to be
very well versed with consumer behavior and producer behavior
trends that are a consequence of human psychology. And you have
to have an approachable and inclusive outlook to things which
allows you more room to acknowledge the possible mistakes and
even benefit in detecting trends that would otherwise go
unnoticed. And like you said, in such uncertain times, the only
thing we can be certain of is the constant, unpredictable nature
of things. And that's when we look at these trends and these
patterns and these price formations, we can only doing so by
living in the moment. And that is something I learned from, from
Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda, one of my son's favorite movies.
He said, yesterday's history, tomorrow's a mystery, but today is
a gift. That's why it's called the present. So Master Oogway a
fantastic follower and really good at pattern. So basically
living in the moment.

Rouba: (04:23)
If we were to look at this particular area, which is your area of
expertise and, you know, something that's been on an evolutionary
scale for the past three decades, we see most of   e-trading
online banking and wealth tech driving it, but there's a recent
report by KPMG that stated that over $135 billion were invested
in FinTech last year globally. And, that the transactional
transaction value is expected to grow to some $10 trillion in
2023. The Middle East financial services revenue will account for
8% of these figures. So experts find that this growth is directly
related to the increasing number of FinTech, startups, growth of
the Islamic banking sector and the high mobile penetration, which
is above the entire planet. I mean the UAE loan has 173% So the
UAE also accounts for one third of the total number of FinTech
startups. We talk about 46% in the world, but in your opinion,
what is really driving such an exponential growth?

Amir: (05:29)
Well, the underlying cause behind such results is the foundation
really to building Syntech development, by the UAE policy makers.
They began to implement these forward thinking policies,
regarding the FinTech since 2017. Two leading, financial free
zones, I've actually development and some tech space global
markets on one hand and the IFC Dubai International Financial
Center. Now the IFC created the FinTech hive, which was
essentially a a hundred million dollar fund that gave companies
access to accelerate a program mentorship from leading financial
institutions and insurance partners. And in 2018 IFC I see an
Accenture, which is a firm I'm sure everyone knows about, but to
those that don't, it's a prominent consulting company. They
signed a MOU to foster growth of FinTechs and enabled such types
of collaboration in the region. ADGM created the reg lab FinTech
sandbox where FinTech participants could actually develop and
innovate FinTech solutions in a controlled environment. And
obviously the after effect of these efforts have not only
provided FinTEch startup much confidence and support, you know,
also kind of generated an acceptance from the public, making them
popular, so to speak. It's kind of like in football or any other
sport for that matter when sponsorships not only provide teams
with the financial support they require, but also the added
benefit of being part of the sponsors, PR tactics, which can help
grow the public state and the team. On another front, the
demographics and these kind of things definitely play a role.
almost half of the population in the MENA region is younger than
25. And this factor alone allows for growing market of early
technological adopters. Now, the younger, the population, the
more flexible and adaptable they are to these types of
technological investments and UAE in particular acts as a gateway
to a wider region, and enables FinTechs to enter emerging markets
across Africa, South Asia, and of course the middle East. Now
this expanded region along with being an $8 trillion market is
home to 3 billion people, with 70% of them, having limited to no
access to financial services. Now, although the middle East
constitutes about 1% of the global FinTech investment, this
sector is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 30%. This
means that for a mere and significantly smaller investments, the
growth levels are multifold in amount. Now at the same time as
ADJM and BRC created these environments to foster FinTechs and
enabled them to grow, the Central Bank of the UAE and the SCA,
the Securities and Commodity Authority, they established a
dedicated  FinTech office to set national regulations
specific to the industry. In 2018, they launched the production
strategy, which aims to convert 50% of government transactions to
e-payment services to allow these FinTechs to partake in the
game. And they're also then, different investment funds who have
come up over the years, like the, [inaudible] f...