For much of the past decade, GCC banks operated in an environment defined by strong liquidity, rapid credit expansion and relatively stable macroeconomic conditions. Supported by high oil revenues and ambitious national growth agendas, the region’s banking sector became synonymous with resilience, scale and sustained growth.

That resilience has been tested in recent months and, so far, the sector has responded well. Recent banking data published by the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) and the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) suggests that customer deposits have continued to grow despite heightened regional uncertainty.

Customer deposits increased by 17% year-on-year as of April 2026, and 2% from February to April 2026 in the UAE, while in Saudi Arabia, the growth in deposits was 11% year-on-year as of April 2026 and 2% from February to April 2026 , reinforcing both markets’ positions as regional safe havens for capital. Growth in monetary aggregates and non-resident deposits further suggests that regional and international investors continue to view GCC banking systems as stable, well-capitalized and resilient.

Importantly, there is little evidence so far of the capital flight or systemic liquidity pressures that some observers initially feared. Instead, the data suggests that the UAE and Saudi Arabia continue to play an important role as regional safe havens for capital, supported by strong banking fundamentals, prudent regulation and proactive central bank intervention.

Central banks have also played an important role. Proactive interventions helped preserve liquidity, support credit expansion and provide targeted relief to sectors facing short-term disruption. In the UAE, banks were able to extend working capital facilities and restructure short-term obligations for fundamentally healthy businesses, helping bridge temporary cash-flow pressures while maintaining confidence across the financial system.

As a result, resilience is no longer simply a measure of capital strength. It has become a strategic capability that underpins the sector’s ability to navigate an increasingly complex operating environment.

However, what is clearer than ever before is that the operating environment around banks is changing rapidly—and as a result, so is the role of the CRO.

The recent regional conflict accelerated that realization. Traditional stress-testing models were largely designed around financial shocks such as market volatility, liquidity tightening, and credit deterioration. What many institutions are now confronting is a far broader challenge, where geopolitical tensions, cyber threats, operational resilience, and credit risk can all influence one another simultaneously.
Across the GCC, this has prompted some banks to reassess whether existing business continuity and resilience frameworks are sufficiently equipped for a far more interconnected risk landscape.

This is particularly relevant in a region where regulatory frameworks have prioritized sovereignty, local data residency, and operational control. Recent events have also created an opportunity for institutions to reassess how these strengths can be balanced with greater operational flexibility and diversification, e.g., for digital data storage.

At the same time, a second structural shift is unfolding more quietly beneath the surface.

According to analysis from FTI Consulting, GCC banks originated close to $1 trillion in new lending between 2020 and 2025 across Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. Much of this growth took place during a prolonged low-interest rate environment and elevated liquidity conditions, meaning many portfolios, particularly across real estate and mortgage lending, have not yet been tested through a full economic stress cycle.

That could create a more complex operating backdrop for the years ahead.
For banks, the longer-term risk is not simply operational disruption. While business continuity and cybersecurity remain critical priorities, credit risk remains equally important. If short-term disruption were to evolve into a prolonged economic slowdown, pressure could emerge across borrower segments and asset classes, particularly in sectors that have benefited from strong credit expansion in recent years. In certain scenarios, a meaningful correction in real estate markets would have implications not only for borrowers but also for portfolio performance and risk provisioning across the banking sector.

This is precisely the type of forward-looking scenario that CROs must now anticipate, rather than simply respond to.

Modern CROs are increasingly expected to balance resilience, growth, operational continuity and profitability simultaneously, while helping institutions navigate a far more dynamic and interconnected operating environment. More importantly, the CRO can no longer afford to be purely backward-looking.

The institutions likely to outperform over the next decade will be those capable of identifying disruption early, adapting faster and embedding risk intelligence directly into strategic decision-making.

That requires a fundamentally different approach to risk management. One built around predictive intelligence, integrated scenario planning, dynamic stress testing and real-time decision-making.

Artificial intelligence and advanced analytics are becoming increasingly important in that transition.

Some leading regional banks are already investing in AI-enabled underwriting, early-warning systems and advanced collections capabilities that allow them to identify stress signals earlier and make more sophisticated portfolio decisions in real time. Others, however, continue to rely on fragmented legacy systems, manual workflows and reactive operating models.

That gap may become increasingly important during periods of disruption. Institutions that can identify emerging stress earlier, underwrite more effectively and anticipate portfolio deterioration before competitors will inevitably benefit from lower risk costs and stronger resilience outcomes.

Because in this new environment, resilience itself is becoming a competitive advantage.

The banks most likely to succeed will not necessarily be the largest or most conservative institutions. They will be the organizations capable of integrating risk more directly into strategic decision-making, modernizing operational infrastructure and responding dynamically to an increasingly volatile external environment.

The broader lesson for the sector is clear.

The GCC banking industry is entering a new era where resilience can no longer be measured purely through capital strength or regulatory compliance. Increasingly, resilience will be defined by adaptability and the ability to proactively anticipate interconnected geopolitical, operational, technological and economic disruption in real time.

Discuss the capabilities of AppsFlyer’s analytics for the growth of enterprises

As the global leader in marketing measurement, analytics, and engagement, AppsFlyer sets businesses up for success in this mobile-driven economy. Our solutions enable marketers, developers, and product managers to accurately measure the success of their work and create relationships with their customers based on trust.

Could you describe the service AppsFlyer offers e-commerce web portals and apps?

AppsFlyer provides e-commerce apps with the marketing measurement and analytic tools they need to grow their user base, increase the lifetime value of existing customers, and deliver an exceptional customer experience across all channels without compromising on privacy.

As an example, we offer deep linking technology that allows brands to create and measure personalized, contextual journeys from any channel, including web, email, TV, in-store, and out-of-home (OOH) advertising, directly to the relevant point in an app, or the app store if the user doesn’t have it installed.

Samer Saad, Regional Manager – Middle East, AppsFlyer

E.g., Let’s say a brand is running an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram. Each influencer is given a dedicated link for promoting a product, and when a user clicks on that link, they will be taken directly to the product page in the app or to the app store. Not only does this offer the customer a seamless experience from Instagram to the mobile app, but brands can also measure which influencers are driving the most traffic and purchases.

What support do you offer to the online marketing needs of an enterprise?

Many marketing campaigns today have countless moving parts and span multiple channels, including mobile, online, out of home, and more. AppsFlyer helps businesses keep track of and make sense of it all with holistic, cross-channel insights throughout the entire funnel. Our suite of solutions enables marketers to:

• Measure effectively by delivering full visibility into the source of conversions, and which campaigns bring in the best customers across every channel, platform, and device
• Analyze and therefore make better, faster marketing decisions at every stage of the customer journey with a unified view of campaign performance
• Engage more effectively with customers by providing seamless customer experiences across channels and audience segmentation, while getting accurate measurement data for all campaigns
• Protect marketing budgets by staying ahead of every threat, before, during, and after installation with industry-leading fraud protection
• Connect the dots by syncing attribution and marketing analytics data with internal platforms, using our comprehensive APIs and raw data solutions

Speak about the strengths of AppsFlyer in identifying ad fraud?

Globally, mobile ad fraud is responsible for wasting billions of dollars in marketing budgets. Fraud tactics like malicious bots or device farms directly impact marketing campaigns by draining advertising resources on fake users who pose zero value.

AppsFlyer enables organizations to counter this threat with our Protect360 anti-fraud solution. This employs a real-time, multi-layered approach that includes cluster analysis, personalized validation rules, in-app fraud rules, and post- attribution fraud detection. Protect360 analyses hundreds of mobile sensors to differentiate between humans and bots and determine authentic customers, not only at the time of installation but also for in-app usage and CPA (cost per action) fraud protection.

How far have you advanced with your foray into the Middle East market?

Ezetap forayed into the UAE back in 2019 and has significantly expanded its presence in the last four years. Today, we boast marquee clients across the enterprise, retail, and government sectors. Our bank partners include Mashreq and Network International. We are eagerly looking at expanding across other countries in the MENA region, which was the reason behind our presence at the Seamless event.

How does Ezetap maintain its edge ahead of others as there is tough competition in the market?

Ezetap has been leading the technology transformation in the payments industry in India for the past 10 years. Ezetap has a proven track record of working with marquee clients across sectors which include telecom, modern retail, e-commerce, logistics, NBFCs across the enterprise as well as traffic police, municipal corporations, utilities, and ULBs in the government sector.

Vineet Suneja, Chief Revenue Officer at Ezetap

We at Ezetap believe in customer centricity and in constantly evolving with the latest technology. Both allow us to quickly adapt to the needs of our merchants and banking partners, giving them cutting-edge technology solutions in the quickest possible time with the best-in-class service. Thus, Ezetap ensures a superior payment experience for the customers and a smooth payment process at the backend with high uptime.

Give insights into your customer offerings in terms of products and services and what uniqueness you boast about them?

Our USP is our payment platform as a service solution that comes with a wide range of offerings that can be tailored to the needs of all types and sizes of organizations ranging from retail stores to large enterprises, which are looking to digitize and streamline their customer payments processes. Add to that the power of integration and value-added services such as reconciliation and analytics, digital Khaata, BNPL, merchant rewards, loyalty, etc. bringing you an elevated payment experience like no other.

What sorts of opportunities do you encounter at the Seamless Middle East 2022 exhibition?

Seamless event gave us access to the overall payment ecosystem in the UAE under one roof.

We connected with our existing as well as potential partners and customers, helping us strengthen our relations and explore possibilities of expansion into new countries via mutual synergies.

Explain the distinct security that is part of Ezetap solutions?

Owing to its nature, the payments industry is heavily regulated across the world. Ezetap, being a payments player for over 10 years now, has been fully compliant with all local laws, and regulations across both India and the UAE. We have all necessary certifications across networks, and banks and also meet the required PCI guidelines.

Q 1. What measures are businesses adopting to handle big data?

A1. The amount of data, organizations capture daily, has exponentially increased.  Recently, with the policy changes implemented using GDPR, it has become critical for companies to use their data responsibly. GDPR laws have enforced that companies notify their data protection authority of any data breach within the first 72 hours when they become aware of it. Similar compliance laws have made it critical for companies to not only monitor their data efficiently, but also increase their infrastructure to store and query their data at the capture stage. Hence, businesses are moving towards tools that can facilitate such capture and query of data in large scale, as well as scale their existing infrastructure to accommodate for this.

Q2. Can businesses use old and new data simultaneously?

A2. A multi-faceted approach is essential to capturing and analyzing data. For example, a lot of security and event management tools use the Suricata engine on top of them to detect any network intrusion or threats to their network. Suricata is an open source network threat detection engine. Hence, any new network data can be compared with Suricata’s threat detection patterns, and suspicious activity can be flagged before it is too late. This kind of preventative security analytics is what most enterprises with sensitive data are implementing. To have such systems in place, it is essential to use both new and old data concurrently. Another area that businesses use old data is while launching updated and enhanced products. They can analyse past data about products and customer feedbacks. The real time (new data) shows shifts in demand and supplies, analyzes consumer needs, preferences, and buying behaviour. They can use these to better the product or launch new ones in the future.

Q3. How can businesses derive maximum benefit from Big Data Analytics?

A3. Big Data Analytics help provide business intelligence that reduces costs and improves efficiency of operations. Big Data Analytics can analyse past data to make predictions for the future. Thus, it helps the present as well as the future. Some of the areas that organizations currently use big data to derive insights include network monitoring, and security and incident management. However, lately there has been a rise in using big data to capture data related to IoT devices and monitor user behavior. These provide a better framework for decision making and risk management. All these results in giving businesses the competitive edge.

Q4. How important is infrastructure for Big Data Analytics?

A4. All businesses want to be part of the big data wave, wanting insights for better decision making. But without the right tools, they all end up wading through enormous data. Big data starts at the infrastructure level. Once the appropriate hardware is in place, businesses can focus on database and applications. Thus today’s infrastructure definitely needs not be the bottle neck, but to be able to handle enormous amounts of data – it has to be high performance in processing as well as have huge storage power. On another level, when it comes to security and event management, there has been a huge spurt in the need for the right infrastructure and tools in place to combat security and data breaches. The recent ransomware attacks, have increased the number of threats coming from unpredictable avenues such as IoT devices that may not have the same level of security protection as most computers.

Q5. What can businesses do to ensure a Big Data Analytics framework that is both agile and scalable?A5. Businesses must continue to build robust frameworks for their IT environments that are flexible for future scalability. These should be able to segment useful data from clusters of data available (both organised as well as unorganised data). This analysis needs to be done by talented personnel who have the skills to make sense out of big data. This is the reason businesses need to invest in getting the right skill set for analysis – right from recruitment to training. All these are useless unless businesses have the right infrastructure to handle and store all the big data.

Q6. What concerns must be addressed about privacy and integrity of big data?

A6. With the recent enforcement of GDPR policies, there is greater awareness of the rights of consumers. Since the advent of the internet until now, most consumers who access certain software or websites blindly think that their information has been in safe hands. But as we all know now, this hasn’t entirely been true. Sometimes, consumers have to waive away any privacy rights when they agree to the software license terms that they accept before using any software. GDPR has pushed companies to be more transparent on these policies, and be clear on how consumer data will be used or maintained by them.

Over the last three years, the Middle East is seeing managed security services gaining steady momentum. “Organizations have been keen to address their IT skills and resource constraints by employing the technical expertise of providers such as AppCentrix. However, they are also keen to engage with partners who have demonstrated commitment to the region as, after all, security is deeply rooted in trust,” explained Omar Sati, Executive Board Member at AppCentrix International.

The company has started their three-year plan for the Middle East. They wish to establish focus by gaining regional foothold by breaking into the leading IT markets of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. AppCentrix intend on working with leading local systems integrators and their customers to deliver real-time value through the managed services model. Omar Sati, has also stressed upon the company’s ambitions of partnering with key service providers to leverage the growing popularity of the cloud in the region.

AppCentrix works in close conjunction with ExtraHop along with other monitoring technologies, as they provide real-time analytics of networks, applications, video and voice systems. AppCentrix will also use its distributor status to offer all solutions within the vendor’s portfolio to customers across the Middle East, including ExtraHop Reveal(X), the vendor’s latest network security analytics product.

This new security analytics solution gives security teams much-needed insight into what’s happening within the enterprise while automating the detection and investigation of threats. It builds on enterprise-proven anomaly detection powered by wire data, By analysing all network interactions for abnormal behaviour and identifying critical assets in the environment, Reveal(x) focuses analysts’ attention on the most important risks and streamlines response to limit exposure.

The Birst business intelligence platform connects the entire enterprise through a network of virtualized BI instances on-top of a shared common analytical fabric. Birst spans ETL (extract, transform, and load), operational reports, dashboards, semantic understanding, visualization, smart discovery, and data blending to form a rich, simplified end-to-end BI suite in the cloud.

Birst received among the four highest scores in four of the five use cases assessed in the 2017 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms report, which examined products from 26 vendors, published March 2. Birst scored highest for the OEM or Embedded BI (4.15 out of 5) and Extranet Deployment (4.18 out of 5) use cases. It received the third-highest score in the Agile Centralized BI Provisioning (3.80 out of 5) use case, and it received the fourth-highest score in the Governed Data Discovery (3.59 out of 5) use case.

“The founders of Birst have a deep BI pedigree. This is much of the same team that built Siebel Systems BI, which is now Oracle’s BI stack. They put the band back together, pivoted to the cloud, and built a modern BI platform with an understanding of future needs, experience with a wide variety of use cases, and commitment to the cloud,” said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor. “Now is the time to converge this cloud native BI platform with the world’s first industry cloud company. We’re going to define the next generation of analytical applications.”

Over the last six years Infor has built one of the largest cloud companies in the world with 65 million users in more than 100 countries. An investment of nearly $3 billion in research and development to re-engineer industry specific applications for the cloud has generated double digit growth in cloud subscriptions. With a critical mass of cloud subscribers and petabytes of mission critical data in the cloud, Birst provides Infor a single, elegant platform for to render insights, discovery, correlations, and predictive analytics in a highly consumable user interface.

“Our collaboration with IBM underlines our commitment to foster the IT skills needed leveraging cloud, blockchain technology, analytics, mobility technologies and offer cognitive capabilities for our services which will add value to the day to day lives of Dubai citizens and residents, making everyday experiences more safe, seamless, efficient and impactful for all,” said H.E Dr. Aisha Bin Bishr, Director General, Smart Dubai Office.

Through several initiatives with IBM, the Smart Dubai Office will work with Dubai Government entities to help enable existing digital government services become cognitive. In October 2016, Smart Dubai Government Establishment Department of Economic Development launched “Saad”, a cognitive government service powered by IBM Watson. Saad can understand natural language, ingest and comprehend massive amounts of data, learn and reason from its interactions, and provide solutions that will aid users in deciding on correct courses of action.

The collaboration will focus on building the needed skills to enable government entities to develop cognitive applications and benefit from application programming interface (API), analytics and blockchain technologies. The Smart Dubai Office and IBM will also provide university student developers with a full year Bluemix subscription, enabling them to gain hands on experience with cloud services. IBM Bluemix is a cloud based platform that enables organizations and developers to quickly and easily create, deploy, and manage applications on the cloud.

“Our focus with Smart Dubai Office will help accelerate the development of the IT skills and services in the Emirate and enable government entities in Dubai to begin their cognitive journey,” says Amr Refaat, General Manager, IBM Middle East and Pakistan. “Students will also have access to a platform for innovation, resources and technology expertise to help ensure that today’s graduates have the knowledge and workforce skills to help fuel economic growth.”

IBM Watson represents a new era in computing in which systems can interact and understand natural language, generate hypotheses based on evidence, and learn as it goes. As part of this collaboration, Cognit, a joint venture between Mubadala Development Company and IBM, will be engaged to support the development and implementation of Watson based applications and Arabized, Watson capabilities.

“Today’s announcement demonstrates the strength and value in bringing IBM Watson services to Dubai based citizens and further solidifies Cognit as a true partner for government to bring this transformative technology to the UAE. Everyone involved is excited to see how newly developed IT skills, created by allowing first-hand access to IBM Watson, can support prosperity and incubate the talent of tomorrow’s future pioneers,” said Amal Al Jabri, General Manager, Cognit.

Fostering skills in Dubai is a key focus of this collaboration. Students and faculty members from leading universities in Dubai can also enroll in the IBM Skills Academy where IBM will provide a series of training sessions on cognitive, big data, cloud, security, social and analytics. The IBM Skills Academy Program is IBM’s premier training and certification initiative for academia in the Middle East and Africa region.

In January 2017, IBM and the University of Dubai have already started delivering training to universities in the United Arab Emirates, under the theme of “Big Data Developer”. The training is designed to equip university faculty members and students with the skills and knowledge every Big Data expert needs.

Kamlesh Rao, CEO at Kotak Securities, had a vision of using analytics to embrace the next level of growth, apart from getting insights into the various data points across the organization to give business and department heads the actionable insights in real time. The company thus wanted to implement a tool that can address the current challenge in terms of MIS & Analytics. The solution should also have uniform data in place along with a common view of how they perform in terms of business, customer efficiency and performance. Finesse was chosen to implement Qlik Sense at Kotak Securities to drill down the collated data across all systems to get analytics that helped them in interpretation, analytics and decision making. This has helped Kotak Securities get better visualization of data and to have deeper insights to take more informed decisions.

The Qlik Sense based solution has gone live with the given KPI’s and implemented across the organisation.

Kamlesh Rao, CEO, Kotak Securities, said, “The best broking company going forward is the company which understands their client behavior well and on the go, and which is why business analytics play a very important role in letting us act on data points. Business Intelligence & Analytics is going to arm relevant companies who are capable of absorbing the business of business intelligence to ensure that they are the ones who will be staying ahead and be market leaders in their respective lines of business.”

Rao added, “Data, on the fly, in real time, is extremely important for being in the business of broking today which is where analytics and therefore QlikSense comes into the picture for us. Actions determined by decisions taken based on various data points are extremely critical in the real world of broking today. That is why Qliksense and we go a long way in deciding what to do on an everyday basis. Our association with Finesse has allowed us to make sure that QlikSense is best system to use and it is the implementation that has made the difference for us.”

Sunil Paul – COO and Co-Founder, Finesse, said, “Finesse has in depth experience in consulting and system integration services, and is one of the largest providers of Business Intelligence & Analytics solutions. The Business Intelligence & Analytics solution implemented by Finesse has been designed to streamline Kotak Securities’ business operations as well as to enhance information sharing and administration efficiencies. The system brings out insights for informed decision making. We are delighted to assist Kotak Securities in their strategic digital transformation program.”