The Abu Dhabi Global Market Financial Services Regulatory Authority and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission have signed a co-operation agreement to help them understand and support financial IT in each other's jurisdiction.

ASIC is convinced that the Middle East and North Africa are on the brink of a 'fintech' (financial IT) boom, with several cities taking steps to establish themselves as fintech hubs. To date, most fintech activity has occurred in the payments space, with startups offering services including bill payment, electronic wallets, mobile and online payment solutions.

The United Arab Emirates (of which Abu Dhabi is the capital) is Australia’s largest trading partner in the Middle East, with two-way goods and services trade worth $8.8 billion in 2015. The agreement contains non-legally-binding rules for the sharing of information between the two regulators.

This agreement will enable the FSRA and ASIC to refer innovative fintech businesses to each other for advice and support by means of ASIC's 'innovation hub' and its ADGM equivalent, the regulatory laboratory known as 'RegLab'. These two bodies offer help to innovative fintech businesses to understand the regulatory regimes in each of their jurisdictions. Australian fintech businesses that want to operate in the ADGM will now have a simple pathway through which they can communicate with the FSRA, and vice versa.

The ADGM's recent spate of international MoUs has done the fledgling financial hub's international repuation a power of good and seems to be the achievement of one man - Philippe Richard, the director of international affairs at the FRSA. As the former head of IOSCO (the International Organisation of Securities Commissions), he has an impeccable history of dealmaking between national regulators and an enviable list of contacts.

This is the seventh fintech referral agreement that ASIC has signed, the other ones being with the United Kingdom, Singapore, Ontario, Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia.