A recent study from Bitget Research found that countries in the Middle East saw a 166% increase year-on-year in daily crypto traders in 2024 alone,¹ with the UAE clearly emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets for cryptocurrency adoption worldwide. Ben Grolimund, the general manager of the UAE at Rain, the first fully regulated virtual assets brokerage and custodian in the Abu Dhabi global markets, sits down with Heidrick & Struggles’ Mikhail Kozlovskiy and Guy Shaul to talk about what’s been driving the Middle East crypto landscape, how he is adapting his business strategy and leadership style in response, and his view on the depth of talent in that area. 

Below is a full transcript of the episode, which has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Welcome to The Heidrick & Struggles Leadership Podcast. Heidrick is the premier global provider of senior-level executive search and leadership consulting services. Diversity and inclusion, leading through tumultuous times, and building thriving teams and organizations are among the core issues we talk with leaders about every day, including in our podcasts. Thank you for joining the conversation.

Mikhail Kozlovskiy: Hi, I'm Mikhail Kozlovskiy, a principal at Heidrick & Struggles' Dubai office. I am a member of the Financial Services Practice. My London colleague Guy is joining me today. 

Guy Shaul: Thanks, Mikhail. I'm Guy Shaul, a partner in the Technology Practice here at Heidrick and the global lead for our Web 3 crypto and digital assets sector. 

Mikhail Kozlovskiy: In today's podcast, we're really excited to have Benjamin Grolimund with us. Ben is the general manager of UAE at Rain. Rain is the first fully regulated virtual assets brokerage and custodian in the Abu Dhabi global markets, and has recently made it to the Forbes Top 50 Fintech for the Middle East and North Africa region, as the only fully digital asset player on the list. Prior to this, Ben was running his own company as a founder and CEO. And before that, he spent nearly 14 years at Bloomberg, with his most recent tenure as managing director and regional head for the Middle East and Africa. Ben, thank you so much for joining us today. 

Ben Grolimund: Thank you, Mikhail. Good afternoon to you both, and thank you for having me on the podcast. It's great to be here. 

Mikhail Kozlovskiy: To kick off the conversation Ben, what drew you to the fintech and digital asset space? 

Ben Grolimund: Well, that's a bit of a coincidence, as I didn't grow up thinking I was going to be in the digital asset space. I graduated in the summer of 2008, in the middle of the subprime crisis, where banks were laying off people by the thousands. I was hired by Bloomberg in their London headquarters in September 2008, which was where I started my career in fintech, well before ‘fintech’ was even a word. Fast forward 17 years, I'm still in fintech. 

Guy Shaul: Obviously, people have many different paths into the digital assets and Web 3 space. How do you think your prior roles, experiences, and perspectives have shaped the type of leader you are today? And how have you solved the challenges that you've faced? 

Ben Grolimund: I think that the kind of leader I am today has been shaped by my time at Bloomberg. I spent nearly 14 years at Bloomberg, where I led my first teams and progressed to my first senior leadership position running the Middle East and North African business. I'm very grateful for Bloomberg because that was where I learned about leadership. Bloomberg is a company that is metrics-focused and the performance of teams or individuals can be assessed in real time. The biggest challenge as a leader was to balance the speed and quality of execution with longer strategic initiatives. Obviously, this is true in any company, but the goal is to go fast and far. Guy, you're an endurance sports enthusiast like me, so you would know it's impossible to run a marathon at the speed of a 100-meter sprint. When I got my first team, I was naive and thought I could do both. But really, you can't. You can go fast alone for a very short period of time. But if you want to go fast and far, and juggle real-time execution and longer-term strategic goals, you need a proper relay team. This means that you need to empower and motivate the people around you with the most important and exciting projects. You also need to show that you're pulling your own weight, leading by example, embodying the culture you want to see in these teams or in the company you're leading.

Guy Shaul: Given your experience building your own business and successfully exiting it before entering the world of crypto, how did that alter the way you approach problems today? 

Ben Grolimund: When you start building your own firm as an entrepreneur and hiring your first people, you are exposing yourself to a completely different skill set requirement. At Bloomberg or any large company, you can focus on spending time thinking about how you can optimize every little digit of performance. With huge resources and very well-structured processes, these serve as a platform to supercharge what you want to do. As an entrepreneur, you have to do it all on your own. You need to be able to be a jack of all trades, which really shows the fact that agility is required when you're an entrepreneur. You really need to prioritize for the greater good more than every little detail. I think that's the biggest differential. 

Mikhail Kozlovskiy: Ben, a recent study found that countries in the Middle East saw a 166% increase year-on-year in daily crypto traders in 2024 alone, with the UAE clearly emerging as one of the fastest-growing markets for cryptocurrency adoption worldwide. In your experience, what has been the biggest driver for the Middle East crypto landscape? And did you have to adapt your strategy and leadership style in response? 

Ben Grolimund: I think that in the Middle East specifically, we see different factors that fuel this growth. The first factor is the young demographics. The median age in the region is 26 years old, and smartphone adoption in the Gulf region is one of the highest in the world. When you add young individuals who are tech-savvy with clear and transparent cryptocurrency regulations for digital assets, the region becomes a cryptocurrency hub for companies to legally deal with and invest in. Lastly, it's just the overall realization that digital assets bring a value proposition when it comes to moving money. It's also a hedge against currency volatility in emerging markets. So, if you put all of these different factors in the mix, it is not surprising to see triple-digit growth in the digital assets space in 2024. I think it's pretty clear that this growth has led to an institutionalization of the digital asset space. This means companies like Rain need to adapt to deal with big corporations and not just with retail individuals anymore. A different set of skills is required that needs adapting to, as well as different sets of talents that we hire for. From a leadership standpoint, you will need different forms of governance, policies, and compliance levels. The overall behavior needs to evolve and cater to a more corporate and institutional-based business. 

Guy Shaul: I always hear clients having to work hard to ensure they can find the depth of talent to bring on board, something that has been a particular focus for local Middle East organizations lately. What's your view on the depth of talent in that area, and how hard or easy have you found it to hire the right people with that type of background? 

Ben Grolimund: Security compliance is a universal issue that financial institutions face regardless of whether they deal with traditional financial assets or digital assets. When it comes to talent, you find good talent in both compliance and security. The problem is that talent in this area is in high demand, making them scarce. In the UAE, a 10-million-people country, with a burgeoning digital asset ecosystem, we have seen over 1,200 firms applying for licenses in the digital asset space for the last two years. To be regulated, part of the regulation imposes that you hire specific compliance, IT security, and risk management personnel that need to be approved and vetted by the regulator. With over 1,000 firms that are looking for these talents, it creates an imbalance in demand. 

Mikhail Kozlovskiy: Ben, we understand that Rain recently experienced a security breach. Could you share a bit more details with us, and how did you address the situation in particular from your perspective as a leader? 

Ben Grolimund: We have suffered a security breach recently which got us into a crisis mode. From a leadership standpoint, I think it’s important to ensure that your priorities are very clear from the start. The last thing you want is for everyone to panic and run around doing counterproductive things. When we realized we had a security breach, the first step we did was to isolate the issue and ensure that it would not spread any further. Our next priority was our customers. Our customers were our duty to protect, and we transparently communicated what had happened. We followed up with a press release and gave social media updates. From a leadership standpoint, we made protecting our customers and their assets a priority. To ensure this would never happen again, we needed to update our security systems and policies, audit infrastructures and people by stress-testing them; while training, and re-retraining all of our employees and leaders. At the end of the day, education on cybersecurity is absolutely critical. Humans are the number one reason for security breaches, and it can come from something as simple as someone clicking on a wrong link or opening the wrong e-mail. Training is a big part of what we do at Rain. We also have added additional layers of training and education resources to make sure that such breaches never happen again. Overall it's a great lesson, and we have come out stronger than ever, and more bulletproof that we’ve ever been. But this is still a work in progress, and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Hackers will continue to upgrade their techniques to target companies like us so we just have to keep up and ensure we have the most updated systems, policies, and training in place.  

Mikhail Kozlovskiy: Thank you so much for making the time to speak to us. It's been truly insightful.

Ben Grolimund: With pleasure. Thank you for having me.

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About the interviewers

Mikhail Kozlovskiy (mkozlovskiy@heidrick.com) is a principal in Heidrick & Struggles' Dubai office and a member of the Financial Services Practice.

Guy Shaul (gshaul@heidrick.com) is a partner in the London office and a member of the global Technology & Services Practice. He is also the global lead for the Web 3, Crypto & Digital Assets sector, and co-lead for the Cybersecurity sector in EMEA.

Reference

¹ “Bitget report: Middle East Crypto market surges, daily traders up 166% in year,” Bitget Research, press release, April 22, 2024, prnewswire.com.