Boubyan outlines its transformation into an AI-powered banking institution

Boubyan Bank outlined its strategy to transform into an AI-driven financial institution during an “AI Town Hall” meeting that brought together the executive management and several department heads. The session focused on priorities for transitioning from vision to execution, building the necessary capabilities to expand AI applications, and enhancing the bank’s role in developing customer experiences, empowering teams, and supporting high-quality sustainable growth.

The strategic overview was presented by Adel Al-Majed, Vice Chairman and Group CEO; Abdullah Al-Tuwaijri, CEO of Personal, Private, and Digital Banking; and Abdullah Al-Nasf, Head of the AI and Data Group. They discussed ways to align the deployment of these technologies with business needs, leveraging them to develop work methods, improve operational efficiency, and accelerate execution. The meeting also featured a exchange of views and insights with several department heads regarding priority areas and application opportunities across the bank’s various operations, contributing to a shared understanding of implementation requirements and identifying pathways that align with practical needs and the priorities of the coming phase.

Commenting on this context, Al-Nasf stated that the bank’s strategy is rooted in an integrated institutional vision aimed at embedding AI into customer experiences, developing work methods, empowering teams, and harnessing its advanced capabilities to enable new features that support innovation in the business model. He added, “At Boubyan, we treat AI as an institutional capability whose impact extends to various aspects of the business, supporting service quality, operational efficiency, and decision-making capacity. Achieving the targeted value relies on the integration of three interconnected pillars: technology, human resources, and processes, ensuring that technical solutions are aligned with the necessary capabilities for their use, and that work methods are redesigned to leverage them practically.”

He clarified that the current phase is based on implementing the vision the bank previously launched for AI-driven transformation, noting, “In the previous phase, we identified the foundations of transformation, governance frameworks, and the future roadmap for developing the capabilities of our digital assistant, Msa3ed. Today, we are expanding this vision into a broader scope of institutional execution by building capabilities, developing use cases, measuring realized value, and enhancing the role of teams in deploying AI across various business areas.”

Al-Nasf pointed out that the bank has adopted a suite of enterprise AI tools provided by major global technology companies, alongside solutions and tools developed internally within secure frameworks, ensuring closer alignment with the bank’s needs and business requirements. He continued, “These foundations include working on developing a contact center based on intelligent agents that support departments and contribute to automating internal processes, enabling human resources to direct their expertise toward tasks requiring analysis, knowledge, and decision-making, and enhancing proactive risk management and fraud prevention. Additionally, we are developing the Boubyan AI Academy through learning paths linked to job roles and team needs, redesigning action plans, and monitoring usage levels, thereby strengthening practical knowledge of these technologies and raising readiness to use them effectively and responsibly.”

He highlighted the role of the Innovation Center in developing use cases, monitoring their outcomes, and periodically showcasing the resulting value, thereby enabling the evaluation and refinement of these initiatives before scaling them up for broader implementation, and supporting the direction of investments toward areas with the greatest impact on the Bank’s operations.