Greg Simon is the CEO and Co-Founder of Loyyal, a universal platform for the loyalty and rewards industry using blockchain and smart contract technology. Greg has been involved in the Blockchain industry since early 2013 and believes behavior incentification is the application to unleash the latent value in all things and relationships. Prior to discovering…
As FSI Region Director and Fintech Strategist, John provides open source technology solutions to FSI (Financial Services Industry) clients. His areas of expertise include OpenStack Cloud (IaaS), OpenShift (PaaS, and Container Orchestration), CloudForms, JBoss Middleware, Ceph storage and Red Hat Virtualization. John is based out of Red Hat’s Manhattan office and serves global clients in…
A self-taught programmer at age 16, John started his career in IT Professional Services at GE in 1986. He founded Open Systems Group in 1989, spun off Para-Docs in 2001, and is now employed with Red Hat helping enterprise financials respond to the digital disruption wrought by Fintech.
Naimish Shah is the Head of Innovation & Fintech at Emirates NBD. With over 20 years of experience in the Banking industry within the region, Naimish deals with Emerging Technologies for the banking industry looking into the future and leads in the space of Blockchain thought leadership in the region.. He is also a Mentor…
Mr. Osama Al Rahma is a Director in Al Fardan Group and CEO of Al Fardan Exchange L.L.C. Al Fardan Group, a renowned family business in the Gulf region and active in the Forex Remittance business, Jewels and precious stones, Real Estate Development and Financial Services. Al Fardan Exchange is now on its 44 years…
Saleem has more than 24 years of experience in Information technology with deep financial domain expertise and has worked earlier with Samba in Saudi Arabia and recently with First Gulf bank in Abu Dhabi and has been instrumental in bringing to fruition several Global award winning initiatives in these organizations while delivering core business value.…
Mr Kwok joined the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) in June 2015. He heads up the Capital Markets division responsible for admission and supervision of financial market infrastructures and capital market intermediaries. The division also regulates the offering of securities, collective investments schemes. Mr Kwok also spearheads FSRAs strategy…
Saudi Arabia is changing. Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, Saudi Arabia is fostering a diverse and inclusive society and economy, underpinned by new ideas, new technologies and new ways of living. Since rising to the position of Crown Prince in June 2017, MBS has made a number of announcements and…
Saudi Arabia is no stranger to cyber-attacks. In 2012, the Shamoon virus devastated Saudi Aramco in what Former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta described as “the most destructive cyberattack on a private business”. Within hours, 35,000 computers were either partially wiped or totally destroyed – the company had no email, no phones and employees scrambled…
Since the launch of the National Strategy for Innovation, the UAE has become a hotbed for advancement across multiple fields, from space travel to sustainability. However, since the UAE cabinet allocated AED2 billion to the Mohammed bin Rashid Innovation Fund, one sector has seen the level of innovation reach a fever pitch – the finance sector. Uniting fintech’s…