‘Engineering the Capital Community’ is the theme of this 12 months’s Abu Dhabi Finance Week, the place you might nicely have picked up this newest subject of The Fintech Occasions, however what does that imply in apply?
On one stage, it’s about who’s within the room. ADFW 2025 gathers leaders from organisations managing greater than $62trillion in belongings, that’s over half of worldwide GDP, for 4 days of debate on Al Maryah Island. The programme runs throughout greater than 60 occasions and several other hundred periods, protecting the whole lot from macro and personal markets to fintech, Web3 and sustainable finance.
On web page 8, we unpack that blend, taking a look at how this week is structured, which boards matter for fintech and banking, and the way Abu Dhabi is positioning itself as greater than only a cease on the worldwide convention circuit. It additionally picks out the elements of the agenda that really feel most related should you care about how cash truly strikes: asset allocation, regulation, digital infrastructure and local weather.
A number of of the tales on this subject share that Abu Dhabi backdrop. On web page 14, SemiLiquid’s co-founder and CEO Rico van der Veen units out the agency’s programmable credit score protocol, developed out of Abu Dhabi World Market, and exhibits how tokenised belongings can match into commonplace lending workflows as soon as the appropriate infrastructure is in place, and what meaning for regulated establishments wanting to make use of them at scale.
We additionally take a look at the UAE’s push on sustainable finance. On web page 16, Danielle Bistacchi charts how the nation is shifting from headline pledges to precise frameworks and merchandise: from inexperienced and transition devices to tokenised buildings and cross-emirate regulatory work. Emirates NBD provides the bank-level view: a whole lot of ESG knowledge factors, heavy reporting necessities and the usage of AI to make that manageable.
On the expertise facet, Brett King’s piece on agentic banking on web page 12 explores what occurs when AI methods cease being add-ons and begin to tackle extra unbiased roles inside banks. Taranis, in the meantime, makes the case that finance, AI and data-centre build-out must be considered collectively, as a result of funding choices more and more deal with them as elements of the identical story quite than separate sectors.
Trying forward, our 2026 outlook part pulls collectively views on the place issues might transfer subsequent: extra critical work on digital identification, sharper fraud and threat questions, extra scrutiny on AI efficiency, and stablecoins persevering with to maneuver into mainstream funds and settlement. That ties neatly into our piece on stablecoins and Gulf remittances, the place fee-heavy corridors are already beginning to really feel the affect of cheaper, sooner rails.
We additionally spotlight two makes an attempt to deal with long-standing entry issues. Mansa units out how it’s constructing stablecoin-based liquidity for fee corporations serving rising markets, and RealFi seems at whether or not digital-asset buildings may help shut the funding hole for smaller companies. Each are grounded within the actuality of making an attempt to maneuver capital into locations the standard system tends to miss.
Taken collectively, the problem sits fairly naturally alongside this 12 months’s ADFW theme. Engineering the Capital Community sounds broad on first listening to; the items that observe present what it seems like whenever you give attention to the main points: who’s constructing what, beneath which guidelines, and for whose profit.
If you’re studying this at ADFW, do say hey should you see us across the venue!
Glad studying!
