At Abu Dhabi Finance Week this year, I watched the emirate make its boldest pitch yet to global finance. Closely observing ADFW for two years in a row, the clear preference I see for being present in the UAE – as a doorway for global connections and ease of doing business – has pushed me to look more closely at why it is, in my view, the most attractive cluster to be in over any other business district in the world. The new FIDA cluster aims to bring fintech, digital assets, insurance and alternatives under one regulatory roof just as trillions of dollars are set to change hands between generations. The question is whether a regulation-led strategy can capture that flow of capital – and what it means for those of us who work in and around the region.
When officials in Abu Dhabi took the stage at Abu Dhabi Finance Week in December 2025, I did not feel as if I was watching just another conference announcement. The mood in the room suggested something more deliberate: an attempt to redraw the map of global finance.
First came the data. A new Financial Centre Competitiveness Index (FCCI) from the Stern School of Business at NYU Abu Dhabi placed the emirate 12th worldwide as a financial centre, ahead of regional peers and just outside the traditional top tier of New York, London and Singapore. More strikingly, it ranked first globally for “regulatory innovation”, and fifth on institutional environment.
Then came the initiative designed to turn that academic verdict into hard infrastructure: the launch of FIDA – the FinTech, Insurance, Digital and Alternative Assets cluster. The cluster, led by Abu Dhabi’s Department of Economic Development and the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, is framed as a structural bet on “next-generation finance”. By 2045, officials expect it to add AED56bn (about $15bn) to GDP, create 8,000 skilled jobs and attract at least AED17bn ($4.6bn) in investment.
These are ambitious numbers for a single cluster. What caught my attention, though, was the timing – and the target market.
Global wealth managers are already focused on what has been dubbed the Great Wealth Transfer. U.S. consultancy Cerulli Associates estimates that $124tn in wealth will be passed down in the U.S. alone by 2048, with nearly $100tn of that coming from baby boomers and older generations. Other analyses suggest that globally, intergenerational transfers could exceed $130tn by 2045, reshaping where capital – and influence – sit.
Abu Dhabi’s argument, as I heard it during the week, is simple: if trillions are going to move, why not route more of that capital through a jurisdiction that is deliberately designed for regulation-first, alternative-asset-heavy, digital-infrastructure-rich finance?
A cluster built around rules, not just real estate
FIDA is not a single glass tower or a logo on a building. It is a cross-government programme stitched together from regulators, sovereign capital, infrastructure providers, universities and accelerators.
At its core sit four domains:
- Fintech and digital assets – from payments and embedded finance to tokenised securities and stablecoin infrastructure.
- Insurance and reinsurance – especially large-ticket risks and climate-related coverage that require deep capital and sophisticated analytics.
- Alternative assets – private equity, venture capital, real-estate investment structures and other non-public assets aimed at institutional and qualified investors.
- Long-term savings and retirement – pension and savings products for UAE nationals and expatriates, plus broader retirement frameworks.
The cluster is meant to connect these activities rather than treat them as separate silos. In practical terms, that means regulatory coordination between the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of the UAE, the Securities and Commodities Authority and the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM); financing pipelines that run from the Khalifa Fund to sovereign wealth and family offices; infrastructure partners for payments, pensions, credit and risk-sharing; and an innovation network anchored by Hub71 and local universities to turn research into commercially viable products.
In other words, FIDA is not just about luring more start-ups into a free zone. It is about building an institutional-grade environment where digital assets, AI-driven insurance platforms and alternative credit vehicles sit inside a tightly supervised ecosystem from day one. From my vantage point as a visitor, the pitch was clear: if you are building the next generation of financial infrastructure, Abu Dhabi wants you to do it in a place where capital, regulation and technology are deliberately aligned.
Regulation as a competitive asset
Many financial centres talk about regulation as friction; Abu Dhabi is trying to turn it into a competitive asset. The FCCI ranks the emirate 12th overall, first in the Middle East, first worldwide for regulatory innovation, fifth for institutional environment and second globally for “state capital”, reflecting the scale of its sovereign wealth. ADGM has seen active licences grow at around 70% a year since 2015, assets under management expand at triple-digit rates, and a steady inflow of global names – from Circle and BBVA to major hedge funds – establish or deepen their presence.
For me, FIDA is the mechanism that pulls these strands together. Rather than letting fintechs, insurers, fund managers and digital-asset platforms grow in parallel, the cluster is an attempt to put them under one coordinated, regulator-friendly roof, so that Abu Dhabi’s strength in rules and capital can compound rather than sit in separate silos.
Fintech base camp in a growing market
If FIDA sounds ambitious, it is being built on a domestic market that is already moving quickly. UAE fintech start-ups raised about $265m in 2024, roughly a third of all start-up funding, and the local fintech market is forecast to grow from $3.16bn in 2024 to $5.71bn by 2029. Digital adoption is high: close to nine in ten consumers use digital-first bank accounts, smartphone penetration is above 90 per cent, and most people make regular online payments. The number of fintech companies in the UAE has more than doubled in a few years, to well over 300, with Abu Dhabi steadily expanding its share.
Around that, other “future economy” clusters are taking shape – from agri-food and water (AGWA) to smart mobility (SAVI) and life sciences (HELM). Each of these sectors needs financing and risk-management solutions that do not always sit neatly on a traditional bank balance sheet. FIDA is meant to be the base camp that supplies those tools, which makes it feel much less like a vanity project and much more like a practical response to real demand.
The $100 trillion question
Where the rhetoric becomes bolder is when officials and industry speakers tie FIDA to the Great Wealth Transfer.
At a session titled “Physics of the Great Wealth Transfer” during Abu Dhabi Finance Week, speakers leaned heavily on the now-familiar numbers: trillions of dollars in baby-boomer wealth, much of it in the United States, will move to Generation X and millennials over the next two decades.
The implications are clear:
- Where that capital is booked matters. Many wealthy families are increasingly flexible about where they hold assets, where they live and which legal system governs their estates.
- Younger heirs favour different products. Surveys consistently show higher appetite for alternative assets, digital investments and impact-oriented portfolios among millennials and Gen Z.
- Regulation is part of the value proposition. For globally mobile families, strong asset-protection regimes, predictable courts and clear tax rules can matter as much as investment returns.
Abu Dhabi’s proposition – as articulated during the week – is that it can offer all three. It combines deep sovereign capital, common-law courts in ADGM, extensive tax and investment-protection treaties, and a growing ecosystem of digital-asset and alternative-investment platforms. What FIDA adds is a structured home for that kind of capital: a place where digital assets, alternatives and long-term savings can sit alongside robust rules and supervisory comfort.
Seen that way, FIDA is less about today’s fintechs and more about tomorrow’s balance sheets – the family offices, funds, tokenised vehicles and risk structures that will be created as trillions in wealth change hands.
A different kind of “move fast”
No strategy in finance is completely free of risk; competition from other hubs, the need to keep regulation aligned with technology and the long-dated nature of the returns are all real factors. But having seen the ambition at Abu Dhabi Finance Week up close, I came away with the sense that FIDA’s strengths outweigh those challenges.
ADGM’s growth figures suggest that global institutions are already voting with their feet. The FCCI indicates that Abu Dhabi’s regulatory reputation is catching up with – and in some respects overtaking – longer-established centres. At the same time, the emirate’s broader economy is diversifying, and new clusters in food and water security, mobility and life sciences are creating real demand for the kind of financing and risk-management tools FIDA is supposed to provide.
Whether this proves enough to “ride” a $100tn wealth transfer will only be clear over time. Capital today is more agile and more demanding than ever. It looks for returns, but also for jurisdictional safety, technological compatibility and alignment with the values of younger heirs.
From what I saw in Abu Dhabi, the emirate is making a serious, long-term wager that a regulatory-first, sovereign-backed, digitally native cluster can deliver that mix – and, in doing so, carve out a permanent place in a more polycentric financial system.
If the bet pays off, FIDA will not simply be a new label on an existing free zone. It will be a signal that in the era of the Great Wealth Transfer, the most attractive places to park capital may be those that move fast not by cutting corners, but by building institutions that can change without losing their grip on risk – and Abu Dhabi is determined to be one of them.
Editor’s Note: Ms. Swati Babel is the CEO of Globizera, a multinational firm specializing in international trade finance. The views expressed in this article are her personal opinions.
