Corporate and infrastructure finance companies in the GCC countries are likely to operate conservative strategies through 2021 as the economy recovers slowly from the Covid-19 pandemic and oil shock, said S&P Global Ratings in a new report.
The Central Bank of Bahrain (“CBB”) launched the Bahrain Open Banking Framework (Bahrain OBF) to ensure holistic implementation of Open Banking services by the industry. This framework includes detailed operational guidelines, security standards and guidelines, customer experience guidelines, technical open Application Programming Interface (API) specifications and the overall governance framework needed to protect customer data. These standards follow the comprehensive rules on Open Banking which were previously issued in December 2018.
David Parker, co-chief investment officer at the Bahrain Economic Development Board (an organization responsible for attracting inward investment into the Kingdom for key areas such as technology development and supporting the local financial and banking industry), recently confirmed that the country aims to position itself as the “startup capital” of the world.
The Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) has announced a number of measures to further strengthen the real estate valuation process and practice in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Innovate Finance UK announced “The Women in FinTech Powerlist 2019” which included Head of Fintech & Innovation Unit at the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) Ms. Yasmeen Al Sharaf. Ms. Al Sharaf was selected amongst the Policy Makers and Regulatory Experts category which caters for Regulators, Policy Advisors and Compliance Professionals.
Bahrain launched legal proceedings on Thursday against a number of individuals and businesses involved in a vast money laundering scheme linked to state-owned Iranian banks.
The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (‘UAE’) announced, on 29 January 2020, that the UAE Financial Intelligence Unit (‘FIU’) had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (‘MoU’) on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (‘AML/CFT’) with the Financial Investigation Department in the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Financial Information Center for the Republic of Namibia.
Through careful planning and bold regulatory reforms, the Kingdom of Bahrain is poised to become a major hub for finance, technology, and innovation, according to a new report released by the Milken Institute.
However, Bahrain needs to continue its efforts to overcome challenges and achieve the objectives laid out in the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 strategic plan launched in 2008.
World trade will continue to face strong headwinds in 2019 and 2020 after growing more slowly than expected in 2018 due to rising trade tensions and increased economic uncertainty, said the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
FinTech will radically improve the financial health of the people of the Gulf through access to next-generation banking services, says Simon Galpin, managing director of Bahrain Economic Development Board.
He was speaking at Finnovex ME 2019, a one-day conference on financial innovation and excellence, held in Dubai.
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