On Monday December 12, 2022, the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) organized a workshop titled "The Open Meeting between H.E. the Governor and FinTech Companies" under the sponsorship of His Excellency Fahad Almubarak, governor of the Saudi Central Bank.

The workshop was attended by His Excellency Khaled Al-Dhaher, vice governor for Supervision and Technology, Yazeed AlSheikh, deputy governor for Supervision, Ziad Alyousef, deputy governor for Development and Technology, as well as 64 executive managers and senior management staff from FinTech companies operating within the Kingdom.

In his opening statement, Almubarak stressed the importance of leveraging new technologies and accelerating the growth and advancement of FinTech. Not to mention, it contributes to enhancing the Kingdom's position as a global pioneer in the field and meeting objectives of Saudi Vision 2030.

Almubarak concluded by saying: "FinTech plays an integral role in the growth and development of the Kingdom's financial sector, and contributes to the diversification and enhancement of financial digital products and services. The governor highlighted the importance of the contribution of Entrepreneurs and SMEs to the overall growth and development of the Kingdom, and the role of the public sector in harnessing potentials and efforts to enable and support financial technologies."

During the workshop, SAMA presented some of its significant initiatives for empowering and promoting financial technologies through the creation of the Regulatory Sandbox aims at understand, test and assess the impact of newly introduced financial technologies on the financial sector. The workshop also shed light on the biggest challenges and hurdles faced by this promising sector, and potential solutions.

The workshop concluded with an open discussion between participants and SAMA's management to exchange thoughts and questions.

It is worth noting that this workshop comes as part of SAMA's continuous efforts to raise awareness among the participants in the FinTech System in the Kingdom and enable entrepreneurs and innovators in the field of FinTech. The central bank reaffirms that it will continue to hold similar workshops with other financial institutions within the sector.