The governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB), Rasheed Mohammed Al Maraj has been named the Middle East Central Bank Governor of the Year Award for 2018 by The Banker.
Rasheed assumed his position in 2005, and ever since he’s been making a lot of positive changes that have contributed to Bahrain’s economy. For instance, over the past 18 months, the CBB has worked on several initiatives in the growing FinTech sector here in Bahrain, including the development of a regulatory sandbox for FinTech startups launched back in June 2017. This basically provides a virtual space to startups and companies to test their products within nine months.
What else has CBB done? In October 2017, the CBB launched its own FinTech unit which will be responsible for monitoring the process for participation in the regulatory sandbox, in addition to supervising licensed companies, operations and activities.
Moreover, In December 2017, CBB announced its partnership of officially endorsing the launch of Bahrain FinTech Bay (BFB). Around the same time, they have also issued a new directive which recognizes both locally domiciled and foreign exchange-traded funds (ETFs) as collective investment undertakings. What does this mean? It means that banks and other financial institutions can list ETFs launched in Bahrain on licensed exchanges, while also having the ability to register offshore ETFs.
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