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As a Key partner of the third edition, Bupa Arabia for Cooperative Insurance sponsors Saudi Games 2024    

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Bupa Saudi Games

Bupa Arabia for cooperative insurance, announces sponsorship as a principal partner in the third edition of Saudi Games, under the slogan “ There are heroes among us”. This event is the biggest and the most important of its kind in the kingdom, and its organization comes as a part of the overall sporting initiative that originates from the Saudi vision of 2023. Bupa Arabia’s participation comes in the form of its constant care to provide the best and most sophisticated health care services for increasing fitness and performance with the goal of enhancing athlete’s experience.

Bupa’s participation in this event comes from its commitment to supporting sports events and activities, in addition to its effective goal of enhancing medical awareness in the community, In 2022, Bupa has launched “ Live Right” program  to enhance healthy life patterns , and to accomplish the goal of its vision of improving life quality for every individual in the community.  The program also encourages pursuing healthy habits through conducting effective and attractive learning sessions, and virtual training sessions, in the presence of doctors and specialists in the event to answer questions.

In this context, the executive manager in Bupa Arabia for cooperative insurance, Eng. Ali Sheneamer expressed his happiness to sponsor Saudi Games 2024 as a principal partner and he said: Saudi Games is a new opportunity to enhance the kingdom’s status in the medical and sports sector , adding that the company is always working to enhance healthy life patterns in the kingdom, through “Live Right” program that crowns the company’s efforts in pursuing healthy habits , it also contributes in enhancing medical awareness and encourages to pursue healthy habits and that’s according to the goals of the life quality program which is one of the kingdom’s vision 2030.

Sheneamer also added: Our support for the Saudi Games comes with our intentions to enable different sports and to put a spotlight on its importance to the youth, in addition to its importance in exploring Saudi talents, as well as reflecting our commitment for a promising future in the medical and sport sectors and enhancing the kingdom’s status globally in these sectors.

The third edition of the Saudi Games 2024, is considered one of the largest national sporting event in the kingdom and it’s a special opportunity to celebrate a mix of culture and sport, in which more than 6,000 athletes participate, hosting 53 different sports, under the supervision of more than 2000 administrative and technical supervisors representing 200 clubs across the kingdom, which contributes to  create sports generation that can represent the kingdom in different international sports forums , showing the kingdom’s hosting abilities.

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Transforming Internal Audit: A Strategic Imperative for Middle East Fintech

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Protiviti

By Sanjay Rajagopalan, Managing Director, Protiviti Member Firm for the Middle East region

A transformative wave is sweeping across the financial landscape in the Middle East. Our region, long known for its oil wealth and traditional banking strongholds, is rapidly emerging as a global fintech hub. From the gleaming towers of Dubai International Financial Centre to the innovative startups in Riyadh and the tech incubators of the Abu Dhabi Global Market, we are witnessing a digital renaissance that promises to reshape our economic future. Yet, as we stand on the edge of this exciting new era, we face a critical challenge that demands our immediate and urgent attention: the evolution of internal audit standards in the face of technological disruption.

The fintech revolution signifies a seismic shift that’s redefining our financial systems. Blockchain technology is challenging traditional notions of transaction verification. AI is revolutionizing credit scoring and risk assessment. Big data analytics are providing unprecedented insights into consumer behaviour and market trends. In this rapidly evolving landscape, our traditional approaches to internal auditing are quickly becoming obsolete.

As leaders in the Middle East‘s financial sector, we must recognize that this technological shift presents both immense opportunities and significant risks. The potential for growth and innovation is considerable, but so too are the challenges of cybersecurity, data privacy, and regulatory compliance. In this context, the global evolution of internal audit standards is essential to our region.

A Strategic Shift in Internal Auditing

The new Global Internal Audit Standards represent a more integrated and strategic approach of the auditor’s role in the digital age. No longer can we view internal auditing as a retrospective and siloed function, focused solely on financial reporting and compliance. Instead, we must embrace a forward-looking, strategically oriented approach that positions internal audit at the very heart of our organizations’ decision-making processes.

This strategic shift encompasses several key dimensions. First and foremost is the move towards proactive risk management. In the fast-paced world of fintech, waiting for risks to materialize before addressing them is a luxury we can no longer afford. Our internal audit functions must evolve to become proactive risk management partners, working together with executive leadership to anticipate and mitigate potential threats before they emerge. This requires a deep understanding of both technological trends and the unique regulatory landscape of the Middle East.

Equally crucial is the integration of technology into the audit process itself. As our fintech firms leverage increasingly sophisticated technologies, our auditors must become technology experts. They need to understand not just the mechanics of blockchain or AI but their strategic implications for our businesses. This technological proficiency will enable our auditors to provide valuable insights on everything from system vulnerabilities to the ethical implications of algorithmic decision-making.

The focus on operational efficiency is another crucial aspect of this evolution. In the competitive world of fintech, operational agility is vital to success. The new audit standards emphasize continuous auditing and real-time monitoring, leveraging advanced analytics to provide timely insights that can drive operational improvements. By embracing these approaches, our internal audit functions can become catalysts for innovation and efficiency across our organisations.

Perhaps most importantly, the evolving standards call for internal audit to align closely with organisational strategy. Internal auditors must understand the ‘how’ of our operations and the ‘why’ – the strategic goals and market positioning that drive our decision-making. Only then can they provide valuable insights that help steer our organisations toward long-term success.

The Urgency of Adaptation

The need for change is urgent, particularly in our region. The Middle East’s fintech sector is growing at an unprecedented rate, with investments pouring in from local and international sources. Our regulatory bodies, from the UAE’s DFSA to Saudi Arabia’s SAMA, are developing innovative frameworks to support this growth. In this dynamic environment, we must maintain our internal audit practices. The cost of inaction is high. Firms that fail to adapt risk not only regulatory non-compliance but also strategic obsolescence. In a sector where trust is paramount, robust and forward-thinking internal audit practices are essential to maintaining investor confidence, consumer trust and stakeholder expectations.

A Roadmap for Transformation

Transforming our internal audit functions to meet these new challenges will require concerted effort and strategic investment. A comprehensive roadmap for change must begin with a focus on talent. We need to attract and retain auditors who are both financially savvy, technologically proficient, and strategically minded. This may involve rethinking our recruitment strategies and investing heavily in ongoing training and development for upskilling people.

Hand in hand with this focus on talent must come a wholehearted embrace of technology. Our audit functions need to be at the forefront of technological adoption. This means investing in advanced analytics platforms, AI-powered audit tools, and robust cybersecurity systems. These technological investments will not only enhance the efficiency of our audit processes but also ensure that our auditors are equipped to understand and evaluate the cutting-edge technologies being deployed across our fintech sector.

Fostering collaboration is another crucial element of this transformation. Breaking down silos between internal audit and other organizational functions is essential. We must create cultures where auditors work closely with IT teams, risk management professionals, and business strategists. This collaborative approach will ensure that our audit functions have a holistic view of our organizations and can provide insights that are truly valuable at a strategic level.

Our audit methodologies too, must evolve to become more agile, risk-focused, and forward-looking. This may involve adopting new frameworks that emphasize continuous auditing and predictive risk assessment. Moving away from periodic, retrospective audits towards a model of ongoing monitoring and analysis, we can ensure that our audit functions provide real-time insights that drive business performance.

Finally, as our audit practices evolve, we need to maintain open dialogues with regulatory bodies to ensure alignment and contribute to developing supportive regulatory frameworks. The Middle East has the opportunity to lead the way in crafting regulatory environments that foster innovation while maintaining robust risk management practices. Our internal audit functions can be crucial in shaping these regulatory conversations.

A Call to Action

The evolution of internal audit standards presents an opportunity for change. By embracing this change, we can keep pace with global best practices and define the future of internal auditing in the digital age. As leaders in the financial technology space, we must champion this transformation within our organisations. We must allocate the necessary resources, drive cultural change, and position internal audit as a strategic partner in our journey toward innovation and growth. The path ahead is challenging, but the rewards are immense. By revolutionising our approach to internal auditing, we can build more resilient, efficient, and trustworthy financial institutions. We can create an environment that fosters innovation while maintaining the highest risk management and corporate governance standards.

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As AI and Real-Time Payments Converge, Anti-Fraud Efforts Must be at the Forefront

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Anti-Fraud

If fraud isn’t in focus, the benefits of the parallel rise of AI and real-time payments, and their intersection, have the potential to be rivalled by risks

By Damon Madden, Strategic Solution Consultant – Fraud, MEASA, ACI Worldwide

The Middle East is emerging as a global leader in the adoption and innovation of artificial intelligence (AI), a journey that began with the establishment of the world’s first AI ministry in the UAE. This region, characterised by rapid technological advancements, is poised to harness AI’s transformative potential, with economic predictions pointing to a significant GDP boost. According to McKinsey, AI could add an estimated US$150 billion to the GCC region’s economy, a figure that might soar even higher with the advent of generative AI. Concurrently, the Middle East is witnessing explosive growth in real-time payments, marking a 33.6% year-on-year increase in transaction volumes in 2023.

As these two powerful trends converge, the region stands at a crossroads, where the immense potential for economic and societal benefits is tempered by the critical need for robust anti-fraud measures to protect public trust. While this trend will no doubt have immense potential to unlock value for individuals and businesses, if not managed properly, it could also result in damage to public trust in both arenas. As regional transaction value hurtles towards the trillion-dollar mark (US$903 billion by 2028), the global financial ecosystem will certainly benefit. But just as real-time payments boost economies and enhance financial inclusion, they present opportunities for others who do not have our best interests at heart.

Challenges and opportunities

Legacy payment systems took days to process transactions, which allowed institutions more time to discover fraud. Real-time payments are great for the customer experience but also raise security challenges that are exacerbated by the speed and volume of transactions initiated, by fraudsters’ use of generative AI, and by the rush of enterprises to integrate real-time payment options as part of their digital transformation strategy. Interestingly, the very AI that intensifies the threat from fraudsters allows defenders more options to prevent illegitimate real-time payment transactions.

Saudi Arabia, having launched its sarie system only in April 2021, is already seeing a myriad of scams — investment, fake billing, remote access, identity theft — targeting customers of all ages. According to ACI Worldwide’s Scamscope 2023 report, the value of losses to Authorised Push Payment scams in Saudi Arabia is expected to increase by an annual compound rate of 26% between 2022 and 2027.

Middle East financial service industry (FSI) entities that integrate real-time payments must overcome a series of challenges. Take identity theft. Synthetic identity fraud is easier with AI, so in the spirit of “set a thief to catch a thief”, AI is the ideal tool to counter it. But to do so effectively requires an abundance of granular, high-quality data. The accuracy of AI models is determined by a range of factors, but most of them are data-related. With too few data points or too many inaccurate ones, the results will be too inadequate to stand as an effective countermeasure to fraud.

Fraudsters also need data to be effective, so the other side of the data challenge is the protection of personal information. A criminal can not only use the data they find to impersonate a banking customer but can also sell that information to others on the dark web for a handful of dollars per record. Anti-fraud has therefore become a battle between FSI entities and their criminal adversaries over who has the best data for training their AI models. Remember that a real-time payment transaction is not subject to rollback, so there is now more pressure to build models capable of making the right decision in real time.

Front of house vs. backstage

The data requirements mean that global payments companies that have been operating for decades will have a significant advantage. The more established a payments company is, the more data it can leverage through its payments orchestration platform in the fight against fraud. When sitting on billions of historic transactions worth trillions of dollars, an institution is in a better position to combine data depth with breadth and apply sophisticated AI and machine learning (ML) to spot patterns and adapt/evolve. Such an organisation is better able to spot anomalous behaviour using methods such as behavioural biometrics, where AI examines the mouse movements and typing and touch patterns of a user.

Behavioural biometrics allows continuous authentication of users without any extra security demands being placed upon them, thus providing a seamless frictionless payment experience. In a region where slick digital experiences are increasingly regarded as the minimum requirement of excellent customer service, banks and other FSIs gain a lot through AI. Front of house, they are delighting customers; backstage, they are beating the fraudsters at their own game. With enough high-quality data and the right AI tools, financial institutions can go beyond real-time fraud prevention and anticipate future criminal campaigns.

One hardly needs to draw a graph to visualise the drop off in effectiveness of AI-based anti-fraud systems as the scale and available budget of the bank decreases. Small and mid-sized banks are going to be vulnerable unless they partner with global payments processors that have the scale of data and the sophistication in AI to be effective against criminal elements.

Central payment infrastructures have a vested interest in protecting the payment rails. As the central point of transaction processing, they must ensure security to maintain trust, prevent fraud, and support the overall stability of the financial system. Payment companies have a stake in preventing fraud, too, and to that end will be only too happy to partner with any scale of bank to see the job done.

As time goes on, and the right partnerships form, all institutions will gain much more than the means to protect their customers from fraud. They will also gain monetizable customer insights. Greater volumes and higher accuracy of data will help banks identify macroeconomic and market trends, paving the way to new business opportunities, new products, and new services.

Safe at last

The intersection of AI and real-time payments in the Middle East represents a dual-edged sword — ushering in unprecedented convenience and economic growth while simultaneously amplifying the risk of fraud. As the region continues to innovate and expand its digital horizons, a collaborative and proactive approach to fraud prevention will be essential. Together, with the right strategies and partnerships, the Middle East can build a secure and prosperous future, leaving fraudsters with no place to hide.

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Financial

Phoenix Group Investment Strategy Delivers Impressive USD 47.6 Million Profit for Q3 2024

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Phoenix Group profit

Phoenix Group PLC, listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange has announced its Q3 2024 results, reporting core revenue of $35.9M and investment income of $68.5M. Core revenue is primarily generated from self-mining, with additional contributions from trading and hosting services. The investment income, drawn from digital assets and other diversified Web3 investments, reflects the company’s active capital deployment strategy.

Key financial highlights:

  • Total assets saw a remarkable 148% year-over-year increase in the first nine months of 2024, rising to $977.6 million from $394.1 million.
  • Total assets recorded a 6% quarter-over-quarter increase.
  • The self-mining segment achieved significant growth, surging 285% year-over-year to $26.6 million in Q3 2024, up from $6.9 million in Q3 2023.
  • Earnings per share for Q3 2024 were reported at $0.008.

Q3 2024 revenue came in at $35.9M, with a decline in trading and hosting revenue due to the company’s strategic shift towards deploying more inventory into self-mining. Self-mining revenue has shown resilience, with only a 7% quarter-over-quarter decrease despite the full impact of the halving, increased mining difficulty, and lower BTC prices. Phoenix Group anticipates improvements in mining economics as early indicators of a new bull market begin to emerge.

The company achieved robust returns from investments, marking a 16% quarter-over-quarter growth driven primarily by gains from new digital asset investments. Phoenix Group has demonstrated a strong ability to generate value across diverse Web3 investments, with some assets, such as Solana tokens, achieving over 4x returns. The company is actively pursuing a strategy to increase capital deployment into foundational deals and incubation projects. Despite a challenging quarter for the industry, Phoenix Group has shown notable resilience and a strong bottom line, outperforming many peer mining companies.

“Our Q3 results reflect the effectiveness of our adaptive investment strategy, particularly within the self-mining sector and across digital assets. Phoenix Group remains committed to capitalizing on emerging opportunities within Web3 and digital assets, ensuring we continue to lead with innovation and resilience. As we expand into foundational projects and incubation deals, we are well-positioned to provide significant value to our shareholders and support growth in the region’s tech landscape.” said Seyed Mohammad  Alizadehfard (Bijan), Co-Founder and Group CEO of Phoenix Group.

Phoenix Group’s Q3 2024 performance underscores the impact of its forward-thinking investment approach and adaptive strategy within a challenging market. With the company’s continued focus on innovative growth, the coming quarters are poised to build on Phoenix’s success, leveraging the strong momentum gained within digital assets, self-mining, and diverse Web3 investments.

“Our Q3 achievements underscore Phoenix Group’s dedication to proactive and sustainable growth, especially within the self-mining and digital asset sectors. By leveraging market dynamics and focusing on foundational investments, we continue to unlock new value streams that fortify our resilience and enhance our market leadership. We remain committed to aligning our strategies with shareholder interests, building a robust platform that stands resilient against market volatility while advancing the UAE’s tech landscape.” said Munaf Ali, Co-Founder and Group Managing Director of Phoenix Group

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