The second regional fintech conference kicked off yesterday in Doha to discuss the latest trends of financial technology in the financial sector, and how regulatory agencies can effectively benefit from it in building and developing new business models and practices that serve the renewable requirements of market needs and keep abreast of global developments with the aim of providing a fertile and attractive environment for investment.
Bringing together speakers from the State of Qatar and the Middle East in the field of banking, financial services and information technology, as well as representatives of international institutions and organisations, the conference highlighted the best practices of countries that have made great progress in using this technology, in addition to the experience of Qatar.
Chairman of Qatar Association of Certified Public Accountants (QCPA) Dr Hashim al-Sayed said in a speech that fintech is one of the aspects of the fourth industrial revolution that emerged as a result of the tremendous technical development that brought digitisation in all fields of life.
He added that the financial and banking sectors comes at the forefront of the fields capitalising on technology, with customers increasingly relying on electronic applications and smart solutions in carrying out their banking and financial transactions, which changed the structure of financial services.
Al-Sayed stressed that financial technology has made a huge revolution by providing innovative and effective financial services that can be accessed by customers and companies in several fields. These services include a broad package such as transfer, payment, lending, investment, risk management, data analysis and storage, wealth management, digital savings, cloud services and others, he added.
He noted that Qatar attaches great importance to the digital services sector to strengthen its position regionally and globally in the field of financial digitisation.
Director of Corporate Affairs at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) Salem bin Salim al-Mannai said the conference served as an important occasion for the exchange of ideas and visions on the best processes to adopt fintech and ways to make use of it in financial and economic institutions.
He added that Qatar pays great attention to digitalizing services in all sectors, which made Qatar rank first globally according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group.