Bhutan's DK Bank Gets ADGM In-Principle Approval for Abu Dhabi Subsidiary
The Bhutanese digital lender plans an ADGM subsidiary offering brokerage, custody, payments and advisory services, pending a final licence.
Nadia Mansour Nadia Mansour covers fintech across the UAE and MENA for Anecdoted -- digital banking, payments licences and the startups building around them. nadia@anecdoted.com
DK Bank has received in-principle approval from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market, the emirate's international financial centre. The Bhutanese lender now intends to establish a subsidiary inside ADGM.
The planned subsidiary would offer brokerage, custody, payments and advisory services. It cannot start operating yet. DK Bank must first meet the conditions attached to the in-principle decision and then obtain a final Financial Services Permission, the authorisation required to carry out regulated activities in the centre.
DK Bank says it is the first Bhutanese bank to reach this stage for a financial services presence outside Bhutan.
The application follows closer contact between supervisors in Abu Dhabi and Gelephu. In April 2025, authorities in Gelephu Mindfulness City and the ADGM FSRA signed a memorandum of understanding covering regulatory cooperation and information exchange, giving both sides a formal channel for sharing supervisory information.
What the bank says the licence would unlock
Once licensed, DK Bank expects the subsidiary to connect Gelephu Mindfulness City and Bhutan with investors and financial institutions elsewhere. The bank describes Abu Dhabi as a gateway between the Middle East, Asia and other markets, which is the logic behind putting a regulated entity there rather than serving those clients from Thimphu.
Zheng Yudong, group chief executive officer of DK Bank, said the in-principle approval gives the bank a clear path to establish a presence in a leading international financial centre. He previously led MariBank Singapore.
David Peters, managing director of the Gelephu Financial Services Office, said the bank's progress in Abu Dhabi shows how institutions based in Bhutan and GMC can connect to international markets while working under high regulatory standards.
DK Bank, also known as Digital Kidu, is the official bank of GMC, a special administrative region in southern Bhutan.
A template that runs through two regulators
The sequence matters as much as the approval. An in-principle decision is not a licence; it is a regulator saying the applicant's plan is credible enough to pursue, subject to conditions. For an institution whose home market has no long track record of licensing cross-border financial firms, that preliminary nod from an established centre carries weight with counterparties, custody banks and payment partners who need to know which supervisor is watching the entity. The April 2025 memorandum gave the two sides a framework for that judgment. The bank's application then had to pass through ADGM's own process on its merits, which is why the final permission remains outstanding.
DK Bank's immediate task is meeting the conditions set out in the in-principle approval and filing for the Financial Services Permission. Until that permission is granted, the subsidiary stays unlicensed and cannot conduct the brokerage, custody, payments or advisory business it has mapped out.
