The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) and Luxembourg's Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF) have agreed to co-operate in the development of financial technology or FinTech.

Mr Saeb Eigner, the chairman of the DFSA, and Claude Marx, the director-general of the CSSF, signed the deal in Luxembourg. The regulators will, subject to applicable laws and regulations, share information about innovations in financial services in their respective markets, including emerging trends, developments and regulatory issues that relate to new IT.

The agreement will facilitate co-operation and referrals between the two bodies. It sets out a mechanism which will enable them to refer "innovator businesses" to each other and provide them with regulatory support. The DFSA signed its original MoU with the CSSF in 2007. This deal is seen as a strengthening of that agreement.

Unusually for such deals, Eigner said that co-operation with the CSSF was 'paramount' to creating more stable and innovative financial services. This is the DFSA’s eighth FinTech agreement. In May 2017, it granted its first Innovation Testing Licence, a special class of financial services licence that allows FinTech firms to develop and test innovative FinTech concepts from the Dubai International Financial Centre, which the DFSA regulates. In August 2017, the DFSA became the first regulator to launch a tailored regulatory regime for loan and investment crowdfunding platforms in the countries that are members of the Gulf Co-operation Council. The DFSA also launched a property crowdfunding regime in July 2019, becoming the first regulator in the region to do so.