DIFC’s June 2026 Future of Finance report put a number on the cost of standing still in banking. Industry profit pools could fall by US$170 billion by 2030 if institutions fail to transform, the report warns. AI and embedded finance are the path out, with senior executives at Mashreq, Emirates NBD, and Revolut describing what is already changing inside their own operations.
The report, titled “The Changing Face of Banking: Building Resilience Through Change,” is the second in DIFC’s 2026 Future of Finance series. It draws on a high-level roundtable held at the centre at the start of the year, augmented by network-based research and one-on-one interviews with the three executives. DIFC’s leadership frames the choice as binary for incumbents: transform quickly, or fall below the cost of capital. Mashreq, Emirates NBD, and Revolut, the report suggests, are already in motion.
The DIFC’s 2026 Forecast for Banking
The Dubai International Financial Centre released the report on 17 June 2026. It frames resilience, not size or legacy, as the trait that will define long-term winners in the industry. Digital-native challenger banks, built on AI-driven, cloud-first, and asset-light models, are setting new standards for speed and personalisation, the report argues.
DIFC hosts 290 banks and capital markets firms, including 17 of the world’s 19 global systemically important banks, and calls itself the world’s first AI-native financial centre. Arif Amiri, Chief Executive Officer of DIFC Authority, said the global banking industry is undergoing its most significant transformation in nearly two decades. His statement, carried in the launch, urged institutions to “embrace innovation, resilience and adaptability.” Without that pivot, the report warns, traditional banks risk their profit pools falling below their cost of capital.
The roundtable informing the report brought together senior financial services leaders from across the region. The full year of 2026 will see DIFC publish four instalments of the Future of Finance series. The June report is the one that puts a number on the AI transformation window, and it sets up the executive commentary that follows.
AI in Customer Service Is Already Running at Scale
Revolut’s AI-based chatbot already handles 75% of customer inquiries, according to Ambareen Musa, Chief Executive Officer of Revolut for the Gulf Cooperation Council. Musa said the technology’s impact extends across every aspect of the customer experience. Faster response times, she added, let the company serve customers at scale while keeping service quality high. The figure is a concrete data point on AI’s current footprint inside a major UAE-licensed digital bank.
Independent research is putting numbers on the same pattern. Harvard Business School researchers analysed a year of online chat conversations between a meal delivery company and its customers, and found that AI helped human agents respond to chats some 20% faster. The effect was strongest among less experienced agents, suggesting AI is closing skill gaps by helping newer agents perform at the level of more experienced ones.
The data from other industries suggests the gains go further. International consulting firm Oliver Wyman found that telcos using AI to enhance customer experience can reduce average handling time by a factor of 1.5 to 2, lift first-time resolution rates, and cut post-call work by 40% to 50%. Customer service, which includes technical support, billing and account management, complaint resolution, and more, accounts for 7% to 11% of a telco’s operating expenses. AI adoption, in Oliver Wyman’s estimate, could drive a 30% to 40% reduction in those capital and operational costs.
Banks applying the same approach would inherit both the savings and the implementation risk. Generative AI-powered digital agents are set to generate over US$2 trillion in value across the wider industry, the same firm forecasts. For UAE banks, that figure is the starting point. Revolut’s chatbot already handles 75% of customer inquiries, and the customer is benchmarking it against the assistants in their telco and airline apps, while 200,000 European banking jobs that AI could displace by 2030 are a reminder of how quickly the technology is moving through banking back offices. Mashreq, Emirates NBD, and the rest of the DIFC cohort are moving at full speed to keep up. The cost of getting it wrong is the customer service line item, the loss of differentiation, and a knock-on risk profile the same report’s later sections address.
- 75% of Revolut customer inquiries handled by its AI chatbot
- 20% faster human agent response times with AI support (Harvard Business School)
- 1.5x to 2x reduction in average handling time (Oliver Wyman, telco)
- 40% to 50% cut in post-call work (Oliver Wyman, telco)
- 7% to 11% of telco operating expenses tied to customer service
The Move to Contextual, Embedded Banking
Hyper-personalisation is the next frontier, Rohit Garg, Chief Digital Officer and Group Head of Retail Products at Emirates NBD, told DIFC. The opportunity, he said, is moving banks from static customer segmentation toward real-time, individualised engagement. In a market where customers are highly digitally engaged, Garg added, anticipating needs and delivering contextual offers is becoming a key differentiator.
Fernando Morillo, Group Head of Retail Banking at Mashreq, agreed. He said the next phase of digital transformation will focus on making banking intelligent, predictive, and contextual. Customers, he added, increasingly expect banks to simplify decision-making and help them manage their financial lives more effectively. Revolut’s Musa agreed: personalisation, she said, will be one of the most meaningful shifts, with insights and recommendations reflecting how customers earn, spend, and save.
That demand for context is what fuels embedded finance, where banking happens inside non-bank digital journeys. Garg said the UAE is emerging as a leader, with financial services being increasingly delivered within retail, travel, and government platforms. He pointed to pre-approved financing offers inside merchant platforms as a present-day expectation, with how community banks are turning to embedded finance now being tested in markets from the US to the Gulf.
Banks are building API-driven, cloud-native capabilities to integrate seamlessly into these journeys. For example, receiving a pre-approved financing offer directly within a merchant platform is no longer a future concept, it is already emerging as a standard expectation.
Rohit Garg, Chief Digital Officer and Group Head, Retail Products, Emirates NBD, in DIFC’s June 2026 Future of Finance report.
The Cyber and Third-Party Bill Hidden in the Same Stack
The same interconnected ecosystem that makes contextual offers possible is also widening the attack surface, Mashreq’s Morillo warned. He said operational resilience will become an increasingly important competitive differentiator, and banks will need to combine innovation with the resilience, security, and trust that banking ultimately depends upon. The threats are familiar: cyber intrusions, technology failures, vendor outages, and AI-related risks. Each one is amplified when a bank’s products are stitched into dozens of third-party platforms.
Historical data sets the scale. According to Statista, there were 1,828 cyber incidents targeting the financial sector globally in 2022, with cybercrime costs expected to total US$8.4 trillion that same year. The GCC is a particular target: high internet penetration and a high standard of living make the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait prime hunting grounds.
Norton data shows 3.72 million UAE consumers lost approximately AED 3.86 billion (US$1.05 billion) to cybercrime in 2017 alone, from credit and debit card fraud, malware, ransomware, and identity theft. Newer research shows the operational risk is rising on a different axis. Optro’s 2026 study found 59% of UAE organisations polled reported losses exceeding US$500,000 as a result of disruptions, including vendor outages, supply chain interruptions, IT and cloud service failures, and weather-related events. Third-party resilience was among the most significant contributors, with 82% of respondents reporting that a third-party outage or failure had caused significant disruption to their operations within the last two years, and 67% of those estimating the resulting business impact exceeded US$1 million. The implication for embedded finance is direct: the more journeys a bank plugs into, the more third parties it depends on, and the more the bank inherits each partner’s uptime.
Industry efforts to standardise AI controls in finance, including the shared AI controls that banks and tech firms are building, are an attempt to write those rules before the next algorithmic incident hits the headlines. UAE regulators and the banks themselves are still working out the specifics. The resilience cost is the upfront cost of the embedded finance journey, paid by the same banks collecting the contextual-offer upside.
- 1,828 cyber incidents targeting the global financial sector in 2022
- US$8.4 trillion in global cybercrime costs that year
- US$1.05 billion lost by UAE consumers to cybercrime in 2017
- 82% of UAE organisations reported significant disruption from a third-party outage
- 67% of those pegged the business impact above US$1 million
The Stakes by 2030: A $170bn Profit Pool and a $2 Trillion Gen-AI Prize
The DIFC report quantifies the cost of standing still. Without decisive transformation, industry profit pools could fall by US$170 billion by 2030, pushing many institutions below their cost of capital. That figure, drawn from the report and confirmed in the official UAE release on the June 2026 DIFC report, frames the choice as binary for incumbents. Banks that move early and decisively will defend profitability and reach new client groups, regions, and asset classes, the report argues.
The upside is not abstract. Oliver Wyman’s wider forecast on AI-powered digital agents, also cited in the report, points to over US$2 trillion in industry value. For UAE banks specifically, the prize is the standard set by Revolut, Emirates NBD, and Mashreq in the DIFC roundtable: AI handling the bulk of customer interactions, contextual offers arriving inside merchant and government platforms, and new client groups such as family offices and women-led businesses served through AI-driven advisory. The resilience cost sits alongside the upside, as an additional line item for the same banks. DIFC’s framing of itself as the world’s first AI-native financial centre is the regulatory environment against which the next two to three years will be decided, per DIFC’s 2026 banking report announcement. The window for action, the report argues, is the same two to three years it opens with.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the DIFC’s 2026 Future of Finance report?
The DIFC’s 2026 Future of Finance is a four-part report series from the Dubai International Financial Centre, the leading global financial centre in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. The second instalment, “The Changing Face of Banking: Building Resilience Through Change,” was released on 17 June 2026 and draws on a high-level roundtable with senior financial services leaders, network-based research, and one-on-one interviews with executives from Revolut, Emirates NBD, and Mashreq.
How is AI changing UAE banks?
AI is moving from pilot to core infrastructure. Revolut’s chatbot already handles 75% of customer inquiries, while Emirates NBD and Mashreq executives told DIFC that hyper-personalisation and contextual engagement are the next competitive battlegrounds. The DIFC report frames AI as the clearest path to defending profit pools against digital-native challengers, and cites Oliver Wyman’s estimate that generative AI digital agents could generate over US$2 trillion in industry value.
What is embedded finance, and why is the UAE a leader?
Embedded finance places loans, payments, and account services inside non-bank digital journeys, such as retail apps, travel platforms, and government services. Emirates NBD’s Rohit Garg told DIFC that the UAE is emerging as a leader because banks there are building API-driven, cloud-native capabilities to plug into those journeys, and pre-approved financing offers inside merchant platforms are now a standard customer expectation.
What are the cyber risks that come with embedded finance?
Mashreq’s Fernando Morillo told DIFC that operational resilience will become a competitive differentiator as banks stitch into third-party ecosystems. The wider data backs the concern. Statista recorded 1,828 cyber incidents targeting the financial sector globally in 2022, while Optro’s 2026 research found 82% of UAE organisations reported that a third-party outage had caused significant disruption within the last two years, with 67% of those estimating business impact above US$1 million.
What is the US$170 billion profit pool warning?
The DIFC report warns that, without decisive AI-led transformation, global industry profit pools could fall by US$170 billion by 2030, pushing many institutions below their cost of capital. The same report points to AI as the clearest way to defend those profits, citing Oliver Wyman’s forecast that generative AI digital agents could generate over US$2 trillion in industry value.
