Hey crew, here’s to another week of cutting through the noise and focusing on what actually moves financial minds forward.

No buzzwords, just clear shifts you can use:

🌂 Insurance is getting the assurance that its future is insured

🥳 Another milestone for Frank Digest!

⛽ Fuel-powered cars import ban may be reversed

📈 The quite milestone of Awash’s listing

Here’s to the 106th edition

Let’s dive in.

The least sexy sounding business is about to get a touch of the sexy following three major developments this week:

How Does This Affect Me? Faster regulatory approvals meaning changes are felt quickly. Better insurance offers, better user experience and hopefully claims that don’t take require unnecessary Ethiopian bureaucracy. And if you’re a tech firm looking for a new sector, you should contact Ato Yared asap.

Being witty, funny and knowledgeable is a burden…that we like to embrace.

This week, ፍራንክ Digest turned 2, still in diapers, holding a pacifier but looking out the window to see where the world of finance is going to take us.

We appreciate all of the love you’ve shown us over that last 730 days, every reader from every platform: Telegram, LinkedIn, our Newsletter and the Web.

Your support keeps us going.

Now, back to being awesome.

Request: If you insist, we would like a cheese cake with a soft crust. We’ll let you pick the toppings 😉

If you think recruiters getting back to you after 6 months was a lack of respect, then you’d be happy to know that Ethiopia’s application to the World Trade Organization (WTO) was submitted in 2003.

And that’s 2003 በፈረንጅ calendar (23 years…jeez!)

Requirements are tough but Ethiopia’s economic uncertainty over the years have dragged the issue. The WTO has 166 members, with Comoros the latest to be annexed.

Part of the requirement for accession is implementing free flow of commodities [by] lifting import restrictions. Meaning that import of fuel-powered cars could be reintroduced to meet the requirement.

However, the Trade Ministry is keen on discouraging a full relapse of gas guzzlers. We assume they will put up billboards of EVs towing fuel cars 🚗…🚙. Or maybe have a mature approach with taxation strategies and environmental lobbying.

How Does This Affect Me? If you’re a car importer that’s dead set on EVs, you might rethink your ‘all-in’ investment philosophy. If you’re a lender, your payment offers for these pricey gas cars will look tastier than leftover lasagna (high taxation = high prices).

And if you’re a car owner, you get to pick which car to go visit your aunt አልማዝ with: the EV when gas lines are long or the fuel whip so she can hear you coming.

The ceremonial bell ring at the ESX floor was all fine and dandy when Awash Bank leaders celebrated going ‘public’.

In the world of mature capital markets, ringing the bell is a major event, a milestone, an opportunity to sell those shares that you were holding for dear life and finally get your rewards for all your discipline.

Yet there was no commotion, no major tectonic shift in the earth’s crust. It was almost as if the Awash river itself was silent, quietly meandering in the financial news.

$AWAB is the ticker and it becomes the third listing on ESX, after Gadaa and Wegagen Bank.

How Does This Affect Me? Do you own Awash shares? If Yes, they are currently trading for around ETB 3000 each. Try Neway, connect with a broker and see if you can trade them for this currency called Birr (Or vice-versa)