The Middle East banking reality check
Backbase
What today’s banking predictions overlook about execution, scale, and competitive advantage in the region.
Backbase
Justin De Niese
Backbase
Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company
The shift isn’t ‘more AI pilots’, it’s embedded intelligence built for supervision: decisioning that’s transparent, controls that are auditable, and workflows that run at scale. In markets shaped by regulators' expectations and digital frameworks, this is how banks turn innovation into trust and ROI.
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Alina Beleuta
Backbase
Chief Growth Officer at Salt Edge
Open Banking APIs are the foundation for banks to enable APIs as a customer acquisition channel. While the Middle East is focusing on adopting Open Finance regulated APIs and Banking-as-a-Service APIs, in Africa, APIs enable connections between banks and mobile money operators, expanding access to underbanked populations—driven mostly by market need rather than regulation.
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Tejal Kaur
Backbase
Fraud and Identity SME at Feedzai
Fraud prevention in 2026 won’t be won with more tools or siloed detection, but through unified orchestration and complete customer intelligence. Financial institutions need real-time platforms that combine full visibility of customer identity and behavior with adaptive AI, turning regulatory demands into competitive advantage while strengthening customer trust
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Reham Sabri
Backbase
AGM - Senior Director of Premium Banking at Commercial Bank of Qatar
Meeting expectations is no longer enough. The real shift is toward anticipating client needs before they are expressed. Intelligent advisory will be defined by proactive service, where banks use insight and context to act ahead of the customer and deliver meaningful, timely support.
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Amjad Ramahi
Backbase
Director of Solutions Engineering - MEA at Backbase
In a maturing GCC landscape, growth will not be won by adding branches, but by building regional engines grounded in shared knowledge and a scalable execution framework. Banks that think beyond borders and scale through unified, technology-driven platforms will turn each new market into a faster, more efficient replication of success.
Backbase
Marwan Abouzeid
Backbase
Principal Digital Strategy Consultant, Middle East at Backbase
Digital transformation gets funded on ambition. It succeeds or fails on operating discipline. The region's most promising strategies are only as strong as the execution model behind them.
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Erdem Ilhan
Backbase
RVP Technology - Middle East at Backbase
AI, open finance, regional expansion — every one of these trends breaks on the same thing: platform readiness. The banks that solve for architecture first will move faster on everything else
Why a reality check
Five trends are reshaping Middle East banking in 2026. Each one presents a massive opportunity, and each one demands a different kind of readiness. This report explores what regional banks need to move from strategy to execution, built on insights from Backbase experts and practitioners working at the sharp end of these shifts.
Part of a global series
The trends shaping Middle East banking are part of larger global movements. For the complete picture across retail, wealth, commercial banking, and more, explore our global predictions.
01: AI moves from pilots to production
Intestazione
Middle East banks are investing heavily in AI, and the opportunity is enormous. But scaling from pilot to production requires more than ambition. The banks pulling ahead are the ones solving for architecture and ownership first, then layering intelligence on top. This section explores what that looks like in practice.
02: Open finance moves from compliance to competition
Intestazione
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE have built strong open banking foundations. The next question is what banks do with them. The biggest opportunity lies in treating APIs not as regulatory requirements but as distribution engines that unlock new revenue and deepen customer relationships.
03: Fraud prevention becomes real-time and AI-driven
Intestazione
As digital banking grows, so does the fraud landscape. The good news: a new generation of prevention-led approaches is emerging across the region, shifting from reactive alerts to continuous, intent-based protection across the entire customer journey. This section looks at what's changing and why it matters.
04: Multi-country expansion accelerates across the Middle East
Intestazione
Regional expansion is one of the most exciting opportunities in Middle East banking right now. The banks making it work share a common playbook: standardize the platform first, then scale. This section examines how the smartest expansion strategies are cutting time-to-market in every new geography.
05: Digital wealth platforms become central to growth
Intestazione
The region's wealth is growing at extraordinary pace, and so is the opportunity to serve it. Banks that combine digital platforms with advisory augmentation are finding ways to expand coverage without sacrificing the personalization high-net-worth clients expect. This section explores how.
- Explore the global predictions for 2026
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Discover the trends that will define banking in 2026,
then find out how to turn them into sustainable growth.
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