More than 70% of financial firms in Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) now use artificial intelligence, while Emirates NBD is allocating about half its technology budget to AI initiatives.
Mark Steward, chief executive of the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), told the Emirates News Agency (WAM) on the sidelines of the Dubai FinTech Summit 2026 that AI adoption among DIFC firms had increased from 30% to 70%. About 64% of firms were using generative AI.
Steward said the financial sector was expected to continue growing strongly next year. He also highlighted an upcoming DFSA report on frontier and agentic AI and cyber resilience, alongside a specialised survey on financial asset tokenisation in investment funds.
Emirates NBD has allocated approximately 50% of its technology budget to AI over the past year and plans to maintain that level next year, said Neeraj Makin, the bank’s group head of strategy, analytics and venture capital.
The bank is developing more than 50 AI applications covering areas including fraud prevention and customer service. A trial involving 4,000 debt collection accounts, divided equally between AI and human employees, recorded a 15% productivity improvement with AI, Makin said.
Mohammed Al Hakim, vice chairman of MultiBank Group and chief executive of MB.io, said the UAE had become a global centre for financial innovation.
MultiBank Group, which moved its operations from the United States to the UAE in 2021, recorded trading volumes of about $500 billion in a single month, Al Hakim said.
He added that AI integration had improved trading and interbank financial operations, while the group continued developing technology solutions in the UAE for international institutions and clients.
