Today's Edition
A. SREENIVASA REDDY (ABU DHABI)
Emirates NBD and First Abu Dhabi Bank ranked first and third, respectively, in the inaugural Evident AI Index for Banks – Middle East and Africa, underlining the strong showing of UAE banks in the region’s emerging artificial intelligence landscape.
The Evident AI Index is an independent, data-driven benchmark of AI maturity in the banking sector. It evaluates the region’s largest financial institutions across four key pillars: Talent, Innovation, Leadership and Transparency.
The index covered 25 banks from across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Qatar, Kuwait, Morocco, Israel, Egypt and Jordan. Emirates NBD topped the overall ranking, followed by South Africa’s Standard Bank Group in second place and First Abu Dhabi Bank in third.
Other UAE banks in the top 25 included Mashreq, which ranked 10th, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank at 12th and Dubai Islamic Bank at 21st.
According to the report, Emirates NBD, Standard Bank Group, First Abu Dhabi Bank and Nedbank Group stood apart as the four leading banks in the region’s first AI maturity benchmark. The report said these banks demonstrated a pragmatic and operational approach to AI deployment, with a focus on measurable outcomes.
The report said Emirates NBD explicitly links AI to enterprise productivity, operational modernisation and the UAE’s national AI agenda. Emirates NBD was the only bank in the ranking to achieve a top-three standing across more than two pillars, specifically Talent, Innovation and Leadership. It ranked third in Talent, third in Innovation, second in Leadership and 14th in Transparency.
The report said Emirates NBD currently has the highest AI talent volume outside South African banks. It also leads the index in the number of AI staff focused on software implementation and product management, which the report described as a hallmark of banks actively deploying and scaling AI use cases across the wider enterprise.
The report also cited Emirates NBD’s AI deployments in talent acquisition, saying the bank reported more than 98,000 AI-enabled interviews, resulting in 13,000 recruiter hours saved. It said recent reporting also suggested that AI-enabled interviews saved $400,000 from in-person or on-site interviews that did not progress, while pointing to the bank’s agentic AI ambitions for pre-boarding and onboarding new employees.
First Abu Dhabi Bank ranked third overall in the index and led two of the four pillars, ranking first in both Leadership and Transparency. FAB ranked sixth in Talent and seventh in Innovation.
The report said FAB puts the strongest emphasis among the established leaders on building “AI-at-scale”, with a clear narrative around moving from pilots to enterprise deployment.
It said FAB’s AI Hub states that the bank is accelerating from experimentation to scaled deployment across the group, delivering measurable financial, operational and customer-experience outcomes through platforms, talent and partnerships.
According to the report, one of FAB’s strongest points of differentiation is evidence of agentic AI within core banking operations, including payment processing, relationship management and developer augmentation.
The report said FAB’s cross-border payment processing achieved 50% automation and 75% workflow acceleration. In its commercial business, AI advisors drove a 30% increase in revenue per relationship manager.
FAB also ranked first in the Transparency pillar, with the report noting evidence of staff working on AI controls, examples of responsible AI principles being put into practice and ongoing communication by senior executives on the evolving regulatory landscape.
The report also said Emirates NBD and FAB are advancing AI initiatives aligned with the region’s digital ambitions, including smart onboarding, AI-powered customer engagement platforms and enhanced risk analytics.
The report said many of the region’s most advanced AI adopters are concentrated in the UAE and South Africa, the two largest and most globally integrated banking markets in the region. Banks operating in these markets generally benefit from greater access to talent, deeper capital markets integration, stronger technology ecosystems and closer alignment with global regulatory, cybersecurity and innovation trends.
