Over the past decade, ADIA has placed a strong emphasis on building internal agility to successfully navigate an ever-changing and unpredictable global investment landscape.
Such a mindset emphasises ADIA as a unified entity rather than a collection of individual parts, while retaining the diverse perspectives, expertise and activities of its investment departments.
This approach has permeated every aspect of the organisation, from how we recruit, to our middle and back office functions and, of course, how we view our investment activities from a total portfolio perspective. Most importantly, it has ensured that our people are aligned toward common objectives that benefit ADIA as a whole.
The significant efforts undertaken so far mean that ADIA’s transformation has now moved beyond the setup phase and is increasingly focused on implementation and ongoing enhancements.
The articles below provide insights into how some of ADIA’s core activities have evolved in recent years, in line with its total portfolio management mindset, and what lies ahead.
Within complex investment institutions, the middle and back office acts as the central nervous system, orchestrating processes and delivering insights that support swift decision-making.
At ADIA, these distinct yet complementary activities have evolved significantly in recent years and now operate within a fully integrated platform that fosters collaboration. In doing so, they have moved beyond traditional support functions to become drivers of innovation and agility across the organisation.
ADIA’s middle and back office (MBO) comprises activities that span three key departments: Central Investment Services, Operations, and Information Technology. Historically operating as distinct teams, their integration aligns with ADIA’s focus on total portfolio management. This encourages teams to prioritise the organisation’s overarching objectives, while fostering a culture of accountability that empowers them to make independent decisions and embrace change.
MBO began its transformation by clearly identifying and developing a deep understanding of the issues it would address, then assembled “squads” of relevant experts from across the organisation to collaborate in optimising ADIA’s end-to-end processes. In parallel, it moved quickly to consolidate multiple technology systems into a unified platform, streamlining complex activities and improving transparency. Over recent years, the MBO operating model has continued to evolve, and now includes horizontally integrated “value streams” to manage key end-to-end processes, supported by teams of technical specialists that deliver services to ADIA’s investment teams.
This, in turn, has presented opportunities for talent development, through activities that prioritise collaboration, analytical thinking and problem-solving skills.
To ensure scalability and flexibility, MBO has adopted a co-sourcing model with its key vendors that combines its internal teams with external specialists.
The results to date have been striking. ADIA’s transaction processes have been optimised, resulting in a significant reduction to associated costs even as transaction volumes have increased. Most importantly, the changes within MBO have enabled ADIA to broaden its investable universe and more effectively capture opportunities as they arise.
ADIA’s MBO now functions as a critical enabler of total portfolio management through innovation, transparency and swift, streamlined execution.
With strong foundations in place, MBO will continue to evolve in line with ADIA’s objectives as it seeks to outperform in a dynamically changing market landscape.
As technology drives radical changes in global finance, harnessing the benefits of these advances demands new ways of working. For ADIA, that has meant embracing a scientific mindset across the organisation, drawing on the latest technologies and approaches and cultivating a dynamic work environment that supports innovation.
This has led to appointments across the organisation in areas from data curation and analysis to artificial intelligence, machine learning and systematic investing. Notably, in 2024, roles in these diverse fields accounted for more than half of ADIA’s new hires across both investment and support functions.
ADIA's targeted recruitment drive has bolstered its internal agility, enabling deeper insights into its total portfolio that allow it to capitalise on opportunities more swiftly. It has also been instrumental in ADIA’s development of new investment strategies.
An example of this evolution is ADIA’s Quantitative Research & Development unit (QRD). Now comprising more than 125 professionals across specific specialisations, the QRD team plays a key role in ADIA’s dynamic asset allocation process and researches, develops and implements investment strategies.
In 2024 the team introduced a number of new systematic market-neutral and directional strategies, while advancing work to unify its data platform and enhance its engineering infrastructure. The team continues to grow and will remain a focus for recruitment activities in 2025, as it looks to add specialists in numerous fields, including data scientists and engineers, machine learning researchers and engineers, and systematic portfolio managers.
In what is an increasingly competitive environment for recruitment, ADIA is embracing creative approaches to talent acquisition, participating in two prominent international AI and machine learning conferences in 2024. It will continue to engage with the data and computer science communities, both to identify potential candidates and to build awareness of its growing capabilities in these cutting-edge fields.
Additionally, ADIA is partnering with leading academic institutions to cultivate specialised skills through certification programmes and master’s degrees in AI, data science, mathematics, and statistics, which are designed to prepare the next generation of experts for roles at ADIA.
As always, developing its UAE national talent remains a cornerstone of ADIA’s recruitment strategy. Through its speaker series and tailored learning programmes, it supports and encourages employees at all stages of their careers to develop skills that will enable them to stay on top of rapidly evolving market trends. In 2024 alone, 10 UAE nationals were enrolled in PhD programmes – many in advanced technical fields – underscoring the continued commitment to building the skillsets crucial to ADIA’s future success.
ADIA Lab, the independent research institution supported by ADIA, continued to broaden and deepen its activities in 2024, further embedding its role as a platform for sharing diverse perspectives on data and computational science across all major fields of study.
Among key developments, ADIA Lab expanded the programme for its annual Symposium to a three-day event, bringing together an esteemed group of global experts to focus on key issues shaping the development and adoption of artificial intelligence.
Attended by Nobel Prize winners, leading academics and industry leaders, its keynote and interactive sessions revolved around three core themes: Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, emphasising the need for secure and reliable AI systems; Sustainability in AI, focused on climate monitoring and risk modelling; and Innovations in AI, showcasing cutting-edge advancements reshaping industries worldwide.
The Symposium’s success represents just one of the ways that ADIA Lab is contributing to Abu Dhabi’s growth as a global hub for cuttingedge research, while also promoting education opportunities aimed at nurturing Abu Dhabi’s future talent.
Within the UAE, ADIA Lab has partnered with institutions such as Khalifa University, Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi and New York University Abu Dhabi to develop educational programmes and initiatives on AI-related themes. Internationally, meanwhile, it strengthened ties with universities and research institutions. A standout initiative was the International Summer School on “Trustworthy, Safe, and Governable AI”, held in collaboration with the University of Granada in Spain. This programme brought together 50 master’s and PhD students from 25 universities — 20 of whom were UAE nationals — and featured distinguished speakers from diverse AI-related fields. Participants gained valuable expertise in AI transparency, interpretability, and trust through hands-on sessions and collaborative projects.
Through its commitment to education, innovation, and collaboration, ADIA Lab will continue to play an important role in Abu Dhabi’s transformation into one of the world’s leading hubs for cutting-edge digital technologies.