When we launched Seif, we built it for ADGM. The problem we were solving — making regulatory obligation tracking structured, cited, and defensible — was most acute in Abu Dhabi, where a dense rulebook meets a demanding regulator and a fast-growing financial centre.
But the firms we work with don’t operate in just one jurisdiction. A fund manager authorised in ADGM often has a parallel Cayman structure for its offshore investors. A DIFC-regulated broker may be expanding into Singapore. A virtual asset firm needs to navigate both VARA’s activity-based framework and the DFSA’s Regulation 10 on autonomous systems.
Compliance doesn’t stop at jurisdiction boundaries. Seif shouldn’t either.
Today we’re covering five jurisdictions: ADGM, DIFC, VARA, Cayman Islands, and Singapore.
What We’ve Added
DIFC / DFSA
The Dubai Financial Services Authority operates a common-law framework that shares structural similarities with ADGM’s FSRA rulebook but has its own distinct requirements. DIFC Regulation 10 on autonomous and semi-autonomous systems is the most notable AI-specific regulatory development in the Gulf region. For firms with dual DIFC/ADGM presence, Seif now handles both rulesets in a single platform — with obligations mapped to your specific firm type and regulated activities in each jurisdiction.
VARA (Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority)
VARA’s regulatory framework is activity-based rather than entity-based. Authorisation requirements, conduct obligations, and AML standards are tied to specific virtual asset activities: exchange, custody, broker-dealer, lending, and others. Seif’s obligation mapping handles VARA’s activity-specific structure natively — so if you run a licensed exchange and a custody service under the same VARA licence, your obligation register reflects both.
Cayman Islands / CIMA
The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority regulates the world’s largest offshore fund centre. CIMA’s framework covers mutual funds (regulated, licensed, registered, administered), private funds, and — increasingly — virtual asset service providers. Cayman obligations are often underestimated by compliance officers who treat them as a lighter-touch version of onshore regulation. They are lighter in some respects; in others (particularly for fund operators and directors), the governance obligations are significant. We cover CIMA’s full instrument hierarchy: Acts, Regulations, CIMA Rules, Statements of Guidance, Circulars, and enforcement publications.
Singapore / MAS
The Monetary Authority of Singapore operates one of Asia’s most sophisticated financial regulatory frameworks. For firms with Singapore operations or cross-border fund structures involving Singapore-domiciled entities, Seif now provides obligation mapping under the Securities and Futures Act, Financial Advisers Act, and related MAS notices and guidelines.
Why Five Jurisdictions Matters
The obvious reason is coverage: if you operate in multiple jurisdictions, you need intelligence across all of them, not just your primary one.
But there’s a more substantive reason. Many of the compliance questions that matter most are cross-jurisdictional:
- If our fund is structured in Cayman with a DIFC fund manager and ADGM sub-adviser, which AML obligations apply at each level — and where do they overlap?
- Our MAS-regulated entity is marketing a fund to ADGM professional investors. What conduct obligations apply under each framework, and which takes precedence?
- We have a VARA virtual asset exchange licence and are considering applying for a DIFC VASP authorisation. What are the materially different requirements?
These questions require holding multiple regulatory frameworks in context simultaneously. A tool that only knows one jurisdiction can’t answer them reliably.
Seif’s knowledge graph represents obligations as nodes connected by cross-references, conditions, and firm-type applicability — across all five jurisdictions. When you ask a cross-jurisdictional question, the retrieval traverses the relevant sub-graphs and synthesises an answer that reflects the applicable obligations in each framework, with citations.
What Stays the Same
The explainability architecture doesn’t change. Every answer still comes with:
- Specific regulatory citations — the exact rule, section, and instrument
- Firm-type filtering — obligations filtered to your category, regulated activities, and approved person roles
- Confidence scoring — because regulatory questions have varying degrees of interpretive certainty
- Audit trail — every query and response is hash-chained to the underlying source text
Adding jurisdictions means adding more nodes to the graph, more instrument types to the ingestion pipeline, and more firm-type taxonomies to the obligation filter. It doesn’t change the principle that every output has to be traceable to source.
Getting Started
If you’re already using Seif for ADGM, your existing firm context and obligation register are still there. You can now add DIFC, VARA, Cayman, or MAS entities to your account and run multi-jurisdictional queries immediately.
If you’re new to Seif, book a demo. We’ll walk through your specific firm structure — whether that’s a single ADGM licence or a multi-layered cross-border fund structure — and show you what the obligation mapping looks like in practice.
This announcement reflects Seif’s current platform coverage as of March 2026. Regulatory content is updated as new instruments are published by each regulator. Coverage breadth and depth varies by jurisdiction — ask us about your specific regulatory questions in a demo.