In recent years, the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) has emerged as a key player in the Middle East’s financial landscape, recording exponential growth in assets under management (AUM) and attracting major global institutions.
In a recent podcast interview with Cheque Point, Arvind Ramamurthy, Chief of Market Development and acting CFO of ADGM, highlighted the financial centre’s rapid expansion, including the attraction of entities collectively managing over $635 billion in assets. He underlined the centre’s key differentiators, including adopting English common law, progressive regulations, and investor-friendly services.
Ramamurthy elaborated on ADGM’s early and strategic embrace of digital assets and fintech, noting how regulatory sandboxes and tech labs have enabled the development of regional unicorns. With fintech and innovation at the core of its strategy, ADGM continues to refine its regulatory frameworks to stay ahead of emerging technologies.
ADGM’s AUM has grown exponentially, rising by over 215% in 2024. What strategic initiatives have contributed to the surge, and how do you plan to maintain this growth trajectory in an increasingly competitive regional market?
If you look at the growth numbers by themselves, they are quite staggering. Over the last three to four years, we’ve consistently grown at double digits and recently at triple-digit growth rates. So, we’ve seen very strong growth across our AUM in ADGM.
There are a few things that set us apart. First and foremost, Abu Dhabi’s standing in the global ecosystem. As you know, we like calling Abu Dhabi the capital of capital. It is truly that. And when we say capital, it’s not just financial capital; it’s technological, human and cultural capital. We look at multiple elements. The growth has been driven by the capital providers within ADGM, but more so by the ecosystem that we’ve been able to develop here within ADGM.
As you’re probably aware, we have a direct application of English common law in this jurisdiction, which differentiates us from anyone else in the region. Only a couple of other players globally have this, namely Singapore and Hong Kong. By adopting English common law and having progressive regulations, we’ve managed to carve a niche for ourselves in the global financial ecosystem. A lot of this has contributed to that growth.
Also, not to forget Abu Dhabi’s livability quotient. Abu Dhabi has been consistently voted as the most livable city globally, and it’s a great place to come either by yourself or with the family. Raise a family. I’m a testament to that. I’ve been in Abu Dhabi for over 12 years, and we truly appreciate and love what Abu Dhabi offers us. A lot of this together drives that growth in AUM, which we see in ADGM today.
ADGM recently attracted companies jointly managing $635 billion in AUM, and multiple large entities have decided to open offices there. What lessons can be drawn from ADGM’s ability to attract high-profile players?
ADGM has a differentiated offering, whether it’s the direct application of English common law, our progressive regulations or our service-oriented mindset. Client-centric tends to be a common thread that everyone tends to use, but at ADGM, that’s at the heart of what we do, and client service is at the heart of what we do. For us, it’s always been about that. It’s about ensuring that the clients get the best service when they come in.
Whether that’s in terms of ensuring a smooth onboarding journey, they can speak to the regulators. In a lot of jurisdictions, you can’t. Here, you can speak to the regulators, or regulators are very open to engaging with the community. They’ve got an onboarding journey. They have a relationship management team to manage the relationship going forward.
We also have a team connecting them to the broader Abu Dhabi ecosystem. All of this makes it a very compelling offering for a lot of the clients coming in, and over the last three years, we’ve seen this tremendous growth, as you rightly said, accentuated by what we saw in Abu Dhabi Finance Week. Just a quick segue also into Abu Dhabi Finance Week. Whilst we only ran the third edition of this event last year. It just gets bigger and bigger every year, and it’s becoming an event that many of my clients tell me is unmissable in the global financial calendar. That also contributed materially to the value proposition that ADGM brings, which is our focus on community.
ADGM has positioned itself as a leader in fintech and digital assets. What are the upcoming technological initiatives and partnerships that you believe will further bolster ADGM’s digital ecosystem?
Fintech is something that’s been at the core, and innovation, in general, has been at the core of the regulatory framework that we’ve built. Our first digital asset regulations came out in 2018, way before digital assets are what they are today. In this regard, our regulator, especially our financial regulator, has been very progressive—and they’ve continued to be the way. We came out with an updated version of those regulations a couple of years ago, and late last year, they went out with another consultation paper to further update the regulations. This showcases that we’re willing to listen to the industry and embed the learnings that we’ve had from a very fast-growing sector in general. That is something that differentiates us. Today, we have built a very strong ecosystem of layers across the digital assets ecosystem. So be it investors in the space, exchanges in the space, intermediaries in the space, or technology elements in the space, all of those are today in ADGM, and we continue to attract some of the best players globally into the jurisdiction.
When it comes to fintech, this has been a strategic initiative for ADGM ever since it was conceptualised as a financial centre. We have a tech lab and a reg lab with some of the region’s best ideas. We’ve given them an opportunity in a sandbox environment to test those ideas. Our regulators have helped them along the way by ensuring that they model their business in a manner that tomorrow can be regulated. So we are quite proud of the kind of names that have gone on. Today, many of these unicorns from the region have graduated from our tech lab. This is the nature of ADGM. And, you know, we continue to innovate. We continue to look at new ideas. There are few consultation papers that are out there in the regulatory space, and we continue, most importantly, to build the ecosystem where these players can come and truly thrive.
Which sectors and regions do you see as key targets for future investment and expansion partnerships at ADGM?
At ADGM, we are a full-service financial district. And if you look at the growth that we’ve had over the last four years—the numbers are there for everyone to see. The AUMs have grown, but equally, so has the number of companies, the workforce, the tech companies, and the companies that have come in here and then got listed on ADX. So we’ve seen banks come in, financial intermediaries, and digital assets, which we spoke about. So we’ve seen growth across the spectrum and continue to focus on that. We have a cluster-based strategy in terms of how we look at growth, and these are across all clusters. So we have asset management, new age finance, traditional finance and functional finance. We’ve seen growth across all of these clusters, and so we will continue to focus on ensuring that we build an ecosystem here for all of them to come and thrive.
In terms of where we look at it from a geographic standpoint, we’ve seen interest coming into ADGM from all parts of the world. We’ve seen interest coming in, of course, from the US and UK, the traditional markets. But we’ve seen increasingly, a lot of interest coming in from Asia. We’ve seen Indian companies and Chinese companies come in here.
What we offer today is this ecosystem that is culturally very diverse, but equally, that has very diverse ideas. You have an opportunity to come and express yourself and grow your business from Abu Dhabi servicing, of course, the very large market and the financial institutions in the UAE and the GCC, as well as where people have global aspirations and global growth. They’re looking more and more at Abu Dhabi and ADGM as places where they can be successful.
If there were one message you would like to convey to potential global investors and financial institutions considering ADGM, what would it be?
I have one thing to say. We’re open for business. Here’s an ecosystem where you can come in, set up, and then thrive.
