UAE Banks Lead Regional Responsible AI Push as Adoption Gap Narrows
Emirates NBD ranked first and First Abu Dhabi Bank ranked third in a responsible AI index for Middle East and Africa banks. The Evident AI Index surveyed more than 100 companies and weighted talent highest at 45 per cent across four assessment metrics. The practical question is whether UAE banks can turn responsible AI rankings into measurable deployment across customer engagement, risk analytics and core banking workflows.
UAE Banks Turn Responsible AI Into a Competitive Signal
Emirates NBD and First Abu Dhabi Bank have taken leading positions in a regional responsible artificial intelligence ranking, putting UAE lenders near the front of a banking technology race that is moving from experimentation into operational governance.
Emirates NBD ranked first and First Abu Dhabi Bank ranked third in the Evident AI Index for Banks - Middle East & Africa report released on Tuesday.
Mashreq ranked 10th, while Saudi Arabia's Al Rahji Bank ranked ninth as the Gulf region's other top 10 entry.
Evident, a London-based market intelligence firm focused on AI use in financial services, produced the index.
Its survey covered more than 100 companies, including insurers and payments processors, and assessed banks across talent, innovation, leadership and transparency.
Talent carried the highest weighting at 45 per cent.
Emirates NBD ranked strongly in leadership, innovation and talent, while FAB topped the transparency and leadership measures.
Evident said the strategies of Emirates NBD and FAB are aligned with the Middle East and Africa's digital ambitions, including smart onboarding, AI-powered customer engagement platforms and enhanced risk analytics.
Governance Becomes Part of the AI Race
Responsible AI is becoming a practical banking issue because lenders are trying to scale AI in markets with fragmented regulation, uneven data quality, rapid digitalisation and sensitivity around fairness, explainability and cyber risk.
Colin Gilbert, vice president for intelligence at Evident, said those conditions define the gap regional leaders are trying to close with peers in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
The top four banks in the index, including South Africa's Standard Bank Group and Nedbank Group, identify AI as a strategic objective, offer AI training, establish AI governance committees and document use cases that produce measurable outcomes, Gilbert said.
For Emirates NBD, the report connects AI with enterprise productivity, operational modernisation and the UAE's national AI agenda.
The bank was also the only lender in the ranking to reach the top three in more than two metrics.
FAB stood out for evidence of agentic AI use in core banking operations, including payment processing, relationship management and developer augmentation.
A Wider Test for Gulf Financial Services
The rankings also sit alongside the UAE's broader policy focus on agentic AI.
In May, the UAE set out a training plan covering 80,000 workers across government, from ministers to junior employees, and linked the programme to a target for AI agents to deliver half of government services within two years.
Dubai also announced a two-year action plan to use the technology in the private sector.
For Gulf financial institutions, The practical question is whether high index scores translate into repeatable deployment, transparent governance and measurable operating outcomes across customer engagement, risk analytics and core banking workflows.
