Open finance is good for customers and good for markets, as it encourages competition among banks, wallets, fintechs, and customer-facing enterprises.
But open initiatives often stall, or get bogged down in costly compliance or tech requirements. These barriers derive from the source of open finance: regulation.
The United Arab Emirates is taking a new approach. The Central Bank of the UAE has set up a new, commercial business called Nebras, to serve as an API hub, providing standardized connectivity. Financial institutions of a certain size are mandated to plug in across banking, insurance, and FX.
Jonathan Holman has been tasked with bringing Nebras to life. As the CBUAE’s head of open finance, he has been named chief executive of Nebras. His background includes academia, consulting, and three years as head of digital for SME, commercial, and corporate banking at Santander in the UK.
Timecodes:
0:00 - Jonathan Holman, Nebras - now incorporating an ecosystem entity running national infrastructure for open finance
4:58 - A federal initiative for fintech and data consumption and interaction, with API connectivity as a condition of financial licensing
7:41 - The pros and cons of building a centralized infrastructure for APIs
11:15 - Who is obliged to participate in Nebras - banks, insurers, fintechs, wallets, third-party users of data?
13:47 - Nebras’ applicability within the UAE’s patchwork of regulatory zones
16:03 - Use cases in open finance and how “open banking” has evolved
18:27 - The ambition for open finance in the UAE
21:13 - AI and agentic capabilities in open finance
23:59 - Liability in agentic use
26:23 - A single point of failure?
28:01 - How Nebras fits alongside blockchain rails
29:46 - Prospect for cross-border open finance
