PROFILE
T
ariq Al Usaimi, the newly appointed
Head of Digital Strategy for the
Central Bank of Kuwait, has a
mandate to transform both the bank itself
and the country’s financial sector. Recently
appointed as the bank’s CDO, he is on a
mission to drive its digitisation as well as
transform the whole banking sector in Kuwait.
He is able to take advantage of a wealth of
IT experience having served as CDO at the
National Bank of Kuwait and CIO at Kuwait
Credit Bank.
“One of the mandates that I have is to
transform the Central Bank of Kuwait to
have it more digitalised, to transfer all
the paperwork to digital processes and
to transform the whole banking sector in
Kuwait,” he said. “One of the projects I am
overseeing is called the Kuwait National
Payment System, which is divided into
eight systems such as Central Bank Digital
Currency, Automated Clearing House,
E-Wallet platform and more.”
The rapid expansion of Kuwait’s FinTech
sector, the importance of Big Data and
analytics platforms and the disconnect
between the expectations of young people
and the way they interact with financial
institutions are all topics he feels
strongly about.
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INTELLIGENTCIO
WE NEED TO RE-ENGINEER AND
DIGITISE OUR PROCESSES AND MAKE
A LOT OF INVESTMENT IN AI,
ANALYTICS AND BIG DATA.
Is part of your new position to
transform the central bank’s
approach to technology? Do central banks need to be
more progressive in their adoption
of analytics?
Exactly. As you can see now the wave of
FinTech is really hitting the GCC very hard.
As its regulators we cannot stop the change
that is coming but as our Governor, Dr
Mohammad Al-Hashel, in a speech at the
Global Informatics Forum said ‘We can’t
stop this wave of change that is coming in
but we can direct it in the right direction.’ Yes. With this influx of FinTechs, analytics
and Big Data have become the foundation
for transforming and better regulating and
supervising the financial sector.
One of the main mandates is we have to
transform ourselves and become more agile
and more adaptive. For example, in Kuwait
back in 2013, we only had one FinTech.
At the end of 2018, we had 63 FinTech
companies operating in Kuwait. So with that
influx of FinTechs we need to re-engineer
and digitise our processes and make a lot of
investment in AI, analytics and Big Data.
Central banks across the globe are now
racing to put in their Big Data and analytics
platforms which can supervise financial
transactions across their borders.
Is one of your main tasks to
formulate a strategy to digitise
the banks?
It’s more digitalising the infrastructures that
the banks will ride on. At the central bank
we don’t have a direct connection to the
consumer. We regulate plus we supervise
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