BE - September 2026

AI in Arab Banks THE LEAGUE TABLE The regional average conceals a widespread. Taking only the three most recent reporting years and counting each banking group once, the share of reports discussing AI ranges from roughly 3 in 10 to nearly 8 in 10, depending on the market. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia lead on breadth: just over three-quarters of their banks’ reports discuss AI. Qatar follows at about seven in ten, the United Arab Emirates at just under two-thirds, and Oman and Bahrain trail at around a third. Breadth is half the picture, and the other half reorders the table. Measure depth, meaning how much of a re- port is given over to AI among banks that raise it at all, and the UAE leads by a clear margin, at more than dou- ble the Kuwaiti figure, with Qatar second. Banks in these two markets mention AI in fewer reports but say considerably more when they do. Report lengths are similar across all six markets, so this is a real differ- ence in emphasis, not an artifact of verbosity. Two caveats travel with the table. It measures what banks publish, not what they have deployed, and that limitation runs through this whole exercise. And the markets are not composed alike: Bahrain’s listed banks include several small whole- sale and investment houses whose reports are naturally light on retail technology, which pulls down their figures for reasons that have little to do with ambition. One correspondence stands out. Qatar and the UAE, whose banks write at greatest length about AI, are also the two GCC states whose cen- tral banks have issued dedicated AI guidance for the financial sector. The Qatar Central Bank published its Ar- tificial Intelligence Guideline in Sep- tember 2024; the Central Bank of the UAE followed in February 2026 with a guidance note on the responsible adoption of AI and machine learning by licensed financial institutions. Both arrived late in, or after, the pe- riod measured here, so neither caused the disclosure pattern. But su- pervisory attention and bank com- munication are clearly moving together in these markets, and banks elsewhere in the region should ex- pect their own regulators to follow suit. the BANKING EXECUTIVE 46 ISSUE 213 SEPTEMBER 2026 Who is ahead: AI in Gulf Bank annual reports, 2023–2025 Source: Authors’ analysis of Gulf Bank annual reports. Depth is the median number of sentences discussing artificial intelligence per thousand sentences of report text, calculated only across reports that discuss it at all. Each banking group is counted once. The table measures disclosure, not deployment. Market Kuwait Saudi Arabia Qatar United Arab Emirates Oman Bahrain Banking Groups 8 9 11 15 7 14 Reports 22 22 29 39 20 39 Share discussing AI 77% 77% 72% 64% 35% 31% Depth, among those that do 0.87 0.99 1.58 1.98 0.46 0.96