Day: August 21, 2023

Users of the app can connect their bank accounts to track their net worth and get information on how much they spend, save, and invest.
Saeid Hejazi had gotten into the habit of manually tracking his finances on Excel before Aramex, the largest courier company in the Middle East, acquired his online retail start-up Nahel in 2013.

He remembers that the process of manually categorizing the data he copied from bank PDF printouts into Excel was tiresome and aggravating.

I continued the habit after getting Nahel, but I realized there had to be a better way.

“I wasn’t the only one experiencing this difficult situation; others did as well. Wally was created after seeing the market lacked any superior products.

Mr. Hejazi and his brother Sami launched Wally, a personal finance app that aids users around the world in tracking and managing their accounts, in 2014.

Users are able to monitor their net worth, expenditures, and financial goals in one location thanks to the app’s connections with 15,000 banks in 70 different countries.

Wally, according to Mr. Hejazi, “helps the overbanked to take back charge of their finances and begin achieving their goals.”

“Too many people have a lot of credit cards, loans, and bills, which makes it challenging to monitor them, create a plan for them, and assess their progress.”

The Covid-19 outbreak sparked considerable worry about individual financial matters and brought attention to the value of saving, having an emergency fund for unforeseen expenses, and planning adequately for retirement.

According to a July poll by Sharia-compliant savings and investment company National Bonds, more than eight in ten savers in the UAE think it’s critical to have an emergency fund in place to weather challenging economic times.

According to a different survey conducted in 2022 by the insurance provider Friends Provident International, 45% of UAE citizens still need to begin saving for retirement.
Wally was created before open banking, which gives users the option to share their financial information with a third party, therefore at first, the app’s users had to manually keep track of their accounts. However, Mr. Hejazi claims that the software had already utilized some parts of machine learning at the time.

Wally 3.0, which enabled users to link their bank accounts to automate the tracking process, was released by the co-founders in 2020. The program was initially introduced in North America before being gradually expanded to 15,000 institutions in 70 other countries.

The app’s co-founders released version 4 this year, calling it WallyGPT, the first generative AI personal finance tool available in 70 nations.

“WallyGPT has been constructed from the ground up using machine learning and artificial intelligence,” claims Mr. Hejazi.

This enables consumers to conduct research, plan and track their objectives, get investment advice, and learn about financial services without being limited by the conventional charts and tables.

In the case of a 20-something who is getting married soon, WallyGPT can assist them in determining their current net worth, researching the costs of getting married anywhere in the world, creating a savings plan and monitoring its development, suggesting some investment opportunities (like mutual funds or exchange-traded funds), and more which will help them to reach their goal little faster.

and suggest a credit card that will reimburse their wedding-related travel costs, the CEO says.All of these advantages are “hyper-personalized, instantaneous, tailored, and intelligent,” he claims, adding that WallyGPT’s conversational style brings it closer to being the ultimate financial software.

A user can utilize WallyGPT to ask sophisticated inquiries about their finances, investments, savings, and more after linking their bank accounts to the app and suggest a credit card that will reimburse their wedding-related travel costs, the CEO says.

All of these advantages are “hyper-personalized, instantaneous, tailored, and intelligent,” he claims, adding that WallyGPT’s conversational style brings it closer to being the ultimate financial software.

Through an agency approach with a regional vendor who is subject to UAE Central Bank regulation, WallyGPT is offered in the UAE. According to Mr. Hejazi, the Central Bank (Sama) of Saudi Arabia controls and issues licenses for the app.

“We’re going to concentrate on increasing the number of users in our top five markets in terms of user growth. We are presently working on capabilities that will give WallyGPT autopilot functionalities in terms of product development. The idea is to enable users to “set it and forget it,” according to the co-founder.

For instance, WallyGPT will be able to petition for debt reconciliation on your behalf if you are paying excessive interest on all of your loans, allowing you to start saving. Based on asset performance, WallyGPT will be able to balance a user’s portfolio for investment.

The software, which is available for free, intends to generate income by offering services for debt management, investment optimization, and the search for new financial solutions.

According to Mr. Hejazi, the company with its headquarters in DIFC has a data privacy agreement with OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, that guarantees the data given with them is not utilized for training and is removed after 30 days.

No personally identifying user information, such as user IDs, emails, or names, is shared by WallyGPT.

In contrast to WallyGPT, Mr. Hejazi claims that human financial advisers are only available to wealthy and high-net-worth persons who have to have a minimum amount in cash and assets (at least Dh300,000 or $81,000) to take use of their services, and their costs are costly.He says that WallyGPT is superior than human advisors in that it is free and offers more individualized, quick, and knowledgeable replies.

Additionally, WallyGPT allows users to manage their entire financial situation, including passive investing, whereas robo-advisers only assist clients with a particular, limited aspect of their finances—passive investing.

He proposes using WallyGPT as an example, which “helps users cut down on unneeded expenditures to find more investable cash or pay down debts.”

There are 20 members of the WallyGPT team, almost all of whom are developers, and the company has an engineering office in Bengaluru.

Due to the strong economic momentum in its home market of the UAE, Majid Al Futtaim Holding, one of Dubai’s major private sector businesses and the largest mall operator in the Middle East, recorded a substantial increase in profit and revenue.

According to Ahmed Ismail, chief executive of Majid Al Futtaim, net profit for the six months ending in June increased by an annual 74% to Dh1.7 billion ($463 million), while revenue for the reporting time increased by 5% to Dh18.9 billion.

For the first half of this year, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization increased 13% to Dh2.1 billion.

Although currency devaluations in several of the areas where we operate, the year is off to a solid start as revenue is up 5%.
More encouraging is the fact that, thanks to “a booming economy in our home market of the UAE,” our profitability is increasing at a faster rate than our revenue.The second-largest economy in the Arab world, the UAE, made a remarkable recovery from Covid-19’s slump last year, and growth momentum is expected to continue through 2023. After expanding by 7.9% in 2022, it increased by 3.8% annually in the first quarter of this year, helped by strong growth in the non-oil sector as it works to diversify.

According to data from the Federal Centre for Competitiveness and Statistics, which Abdulla bin Touq, the Minister of Economy, cited earlier this month, the gross domestic product increased to Dh418.3 billion in the three months ending in March, with significant contributions from the majority of the sectors and economic activities that are “the key pillars of the national economy.”

GDP excluding oil increased by 4.5% annually to Dh312 billion.

The privately held corporation owns and manages 29 shopping centers, 18 hotels, and mixed-use neighborhoods. Its commercial interests range from the retail and leisure sectors to real estate development.

During the reporting period, “multiple factors” including the reallocation of capital to the business’s more lucrative and higher margin areas were the primary drivers of profitability.

With a 40% increase in sales and a 22% increase in ebitda, “our residential [properties] company has recorded record results. In fact, our whole properties business has generated another set of records. Naturally, operational effectiveness and financial restraint play a role.
According to him, Dubai residential costs were nominally lower than their last peak, and the company plans to start construction on a new project before the end of the year.

One of the key engines of the UAE’s non-oil economy, the real estate sector, has also maintained growing pace into 2023 following significant increases in the previous two years.

The expansion of the 10-year golden visa program, residency permits for remote employees and retirees, as well as economic benefits from Expo 2020 Dubai have all contributed to the sector’s growth.

Despite global socioeconomic challenges, the property market demonstrated good performance in every sector in the first half of the year, according to a report published in July by Consultancy CBRE.

According to CBRE, while average prices in Dubai’s market increased by 16.9% in the year to June 2023, the market in Abu Dhabi saw 4,737 transactions for sale in the first half of the year, an increase of 88.6% yearly.

Majid Al Futtaim reported that the Tilal Al Ghaf residential property development and UAE-based shopping malls were the main drivers of the company’s property business’s revenue growth of 39% to Dh3.4 billion and ebitda increase of 22% to Dh1.7 billion.

According to the company’s financial statement, which was published on Nasdaq Dubai, the property business was the main driver of revenue and profit growth throughout the reporting period.

Foot traffic in shopping centers grew by 12%, with the Mall of the Emirates having its best first-half foot traffic ever. Tenant sales increased by 7%, with the company’s malls in the UAE contributing the most to revenue.

However, the retail sector saw a 2% decline in revenue to Dh14.1 billion and a 7% decline in ebitda in the first half of the year, according to a statement released by the company on Monday. “Currency devaluations across the group’s footprint” were mostly to blame, it was noted.

Revenue increased by 8%, and ebitda rose by 5%, at a steady exchange rate.

The company said its digital retail business continued strong, with a 13% increase in revenue to Dh1.2 billion. The company launched five additional outlets in the region during the first half.

Majid Al Futtaim’s entertainment division saw a 4% annual increase in revenue to Dh822 million as the movie industry continues to bounce back from “delays and adjustments to its content pipeline”.

With the inauguration of Snow Abu Dhabi in June—the group’s fourth snow destination in the region—the company increased the scope of its entertainment business in the first half.

In the first half of the year, it opened 11 new outlets, which resulted in a 31% increase in revenue for its lifestyle businesses to Dh473 million.

At the conclusion of the first half, Majid Al Futtaim had net borrowings of Dh15 billion, with the majority of the debt expiring in 2026 and later, in order to maintain “a strong financial and liquidity position supported by a well-balanced financing structure.”

As it seeks to diversify its funding sources, the corporation secured $500 million in May through a green sukuk, its fourth in about four years. The corporation stated at the time that it would refinance a previous $800 million bond commitment with the proceeds.

The business will ‘eventually’ use its green financing structure to draw green equity funds.
To address the growing cooling demand in the UAE, the second-largest economy in the Arab world, the National Central Cooling Company, also known as Tabreed, and Adnoc are looking into more geothermal energy projects. The first geothermal energy project for the Gulf region was just unveiled by Tabreed and the Abu Dhabi-based energy firm, and it’s anticipated to provide 10% of Masdar City’s cooling requirements.

To expand the use of this technology, we will keep investigating the geothermal potential in the entire Abu Dhabi and Al Ain region. Managing director of Tabreed, Antonio Di Cecca.

The district cooling network at Tabreed’s sustainable research and development hub will get chilled water from the Masdar City project’s absorption cooling system after hot water heated by the heat from the wells passes through it.

This is a physical facility that will be connected to Masdar City’s current district cooling network. Before Cop28, we’ll be able to commission the plant. Construction has already begun, and we are on schedule, according to Mr. Di Cecca.

In contrast to intermittent sources of energy like sun and wind, geothermal energy uses the heat produced within the Earth’s core. High capacity factors for geothermal energy facilities allow them to operate for long periods of time at maximum output for longer periods.

According to the International Energy Agency, the usage of air conditioners and electric fans accounts for nearly a fifth of the total electricity used in buildings around the world, or 10% of all worldwide electricity consumption.
According to the EPA, the need for energy for space cooling is anticipated to more than treble by 2050. According to Mr. Di Cecca, cooling accounts for more than 50% of the electricity used in buildings in the United Arab Emirates, and that percentage can reach 70% during peak hours.

“Population growth [and] access to better lifestyle options will increase the demand for air conditioning, so policymakers and governments must make critical decisions on how to address [this],” he said.

Demand management and improving equipment efficiency are only two of the many options available.

District cooling, which entails a network of pipes filled with chilled water from cooling plants, would be crucial since it aids in aggregating demand, according to Mr. Di Cecca.

According to the World Population Review, the population of the UAE, which is currently 9.89 million, is expected to keep increasing until 2033, when it will reach a peak of 10.71 million.

One of the biggest utilities in the Middle East, Tabreed, has been quickly growing its activities there.

The corporation disclosed its green financing strategy last year in an effort to entice green equity funds to make investments in its enterprise.

Our goal, according to Mr. Di Cecca, is to investigate the market and see if there are any promising options before using this framework.

Particularly in the GCC states, the marketplace for green and sustainable bonds and sukuk is flourishing as governments in the oil-rich economic bloc strive to meet their net-zero pledges.

Masdar, an Abu Dhabi-based provider of clean energy, sold its initial green bond this month on the London Stock Exchange to raise money for its newest sustainable energy initiatives.

By selling 10-year senior unsecured notes, Masdar finished its $750 million green bond issue on July 19. Due to the significant demand from domestic and foreign investors, the offering was 5.6 times oversubscribed, and the order book reaching a high of $4.2 billion.