Emirates NBD has more than 150 AI initiatives underway, with 65 already in production, according to a Fortune report published on November 11, 2026. The Dubai-based lender commits about half of its technology budget to AI, and its Emirates NBD AI program was one of several bank strategies in focus at the Dubai FinTech Summit in early November, where UAE lenders signaled a shift from AI experiments to day-to-day operations.
What changed
Fortune reports that Emirates NBD was ranked the most AI-advanced bank in the Middle East and Africa by Evident in June, in a ranking of 25 regional banks. The bank also became the first in the MENA region to deploy OpenAI’s GPT models on in-country infrastructure. Its planned uses span customer experience, risk management and financial crime prevention, process automation and employee productivity.
Security is where the bank sees the sharpest change. Fortune reports that the number of critical security flaws Emirates NBD must evaluate rose from about 1,000 a month in early 2025 to about 15,000 last month, and that the bank now uses a frontier OpenAI model to test its own systems for weaknesses. Miguel Rio-Tinto, the group’s chief digital and information officer, told Fortune: “Banking will transform more in the next five years than it transformed in the last 30 years.”
At the summit itself, Neeraj Makin, Emirates NBD’s group head of strategy, analytics and venture capital, said the bank directed about 50% of its technology budget to AI over the past year and plans to keep that level, according to WAM coverage carried by TradeArabia. The same report said the bank is developing more than 50 AI use cases, including fraud prevention and customer service, and described a debt collection trial in which 4,000 accounts were split equally between AI and employees, with AI showing a 15% productivity improvement. The two reports count initiatives and use cases differently, so the figures should not be read as a single measure.
Other banks are moving too. Fortune reports that Commercial Bank of Dubai announced AI partnerships with Microsoft, Silent Eight, Comarch AI Wealth, Zamp, Harvey, Sirion and Flank, and estimates that AI agents could handle 55% to 60% of operational tasks, with humans approving outcomes. Separately, Dubai Financial Services Authority chief executive Mark Steward said AI adoption among DIFC firms has risen from 30% to more than 70%.
Why Emirates NBD AI matters for businesses
Most UAE SMEs will never run 150 AI projects. The useful lesson is in how a large bank chose where to start. The categories Emirates NBD names, customer service, fraud and risk, process automation and staff productivity, map directly onto the problems smaller firms face, just at a different scale. A trading company chasing late invoices, a clinic answering the same booking questions, or a property firm screening leads all have a version of the debt collection trial the bank ran.
The trial design is the second lesson. Splitting work evenly between AI and people and measuring the difference is a simple, cheap way to get evidence before scaling. SMEs in the GCC, India or Europe can copy that method with a few hundred customer emails or support tickets.
The third lesson is about oversight. Commercial Bank of Dubai frames its agent plans with humans approving outcomes, and Emirates NBD treats security as a frontline AI use case. As customers in the UAE get used to faster, AI-assisted service from their banks, they will expect similar speed from the smaller companies they deal with, but they will also expect their data to be handled carefully.
What to do now
- Pick one process with clear volume and cost, such as collections reminders or first-line customer queries, and make it your first AI candidate.
- Run a split test: let AI handle half the volume and your team the other half for a fixed period, then compare speed, accuracy and customer response.
- Keep a human approval step on any output that touches money, contracts or customer data.
- Review your security basics before adding AI tools, including access rights, vendor data policies and where data is stored.
- Set a small, ring-fenced AI budget and review results quarterly rather than spreading money across many tools at once.
- Document what works so you can repeat it in other departments.
If you want help scoping a first project, our AI automation team in Dubai can map the process and design a pilot with you.