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eToro witnesses steady growth in the UAE

Investment platform seeks to bring UAE equities to global audience

eToro, a leading multi-asset investment platform, is witnessing significant growth in the UAE, its founder said.

Last year we officially activated the licence exactly a year ago during the Abu Dhabi Finance Week. Since then we’ve seen significant growth in the region. We’re gradually localising our product more and more to the UAE and looking to bring in more of our global products,” Yoni Assia, co-founder and CEO of eToro, told Khaleej Times during his recent visit to Dubai.

The platform is now in the process of expanding the local offering as well as talking to ADX as well. “We believe that the opportunity that we bring here is twofold for the UAE. One, is making it simpler and more accessible for the locals to diversify their portfolio between both local stocks and global stocks in a unified portfolio. So you can have US stocks, local stocks and crypto in one portfolio alongside ETFs, commodities and currencies, as well as bringing those stocks to the global markets. So I think there’s a huge opportunity,” Assia said.

Making the local stocks accessible to eToro’s global audience is also a very big opportunity, Assia said. “We have 12 different market analysts in Australia, in Asia, in France, in Germany covering both the local market for local customers as well as the local markets for global customers. So I think for us it’s a great opportunity to see more exciting companies going public in the local markets and then building our global franchise to be able to cover those stocks and to bring also our technology to cover the local stocks for our global audience,” he added.

There are infinite amount of innovation and opportunities there, but that world hasn’t yet connected to the traditional world, Assia stressed. “Eventually, I have no doubt DFM will have a blockchain-based, 24x7 system that enables digital assets, maybe digital REITs here from Dubai to trade anywhere around the world as simply as crypto assets. But that process takes time because it takes time for local exchanges, for local banks to adapt and to replace all of their technology,” he added.

Dubai is fast emerging as one of the largest crypto millionaire hubs in the world, Assia stressed. “I know a lot of people who moved from different countries here that have made their wealth in crypto. And I think the government here or the different regulators are also very supportive of this trend and this industry” he added.

eToro has been very successful over the past 17 years and its growth in Europe was the concept of harmonising regulation across the continent. “When you have one set of rules for Germany and for France and for Italy and for Spain and for the UK, you build technology once and it spreads, which is why still Europe and the UK for us is still 70 per cent of our business. So I think if the UAE would be able to drive that, to be able to build something in between the larger players in the region, I think that’s a huge opportunity for crypto generally, for the digital economy, and for the UAE,” Assia said.