In recent years, the financial services market has boomed globally especially in the Middle east region. Despite the impact of the pandemic, it continues to grow, with a record number of capitalraising deals set to be closed in 2021. Banks are currently addressing the challenges as a result of changing consumer demands, digital rivals, and increased regulatory compliance through customer-centric innovation strategy led by Open Banking, Agile Transformation, Big data, AI, Cloud, embedded finance and regulatory frameworks policy initiatives that is reshaping how banks have historically worked. Traditional banks have many advantages such as funding customers’ trust.

However, legacy systems are weighing them down and they find it difficult to adapt to the growing needs of a tech-savvy generation. The Middle East financial landscape is being irreversibly altered by the expansion of a transformative new entity—Neobanks- cater to retail customers, and small and medium businesses, which are generally underserved by traditional banks. They leverage the customer focusing services to differentiate themselves and there by introducing new business models like- Conversational banking, contactless payments, data analytics, banking as a service and applications of different technologies in security and risk aspects to provide superior customer service, privacy and personalization.

The Middle East has experienced consistent growth of digital banks in recent years with incumbent banks grabbing the opportunity and launching their stand-alone digital advancements and Central banks are rolling up their sleeves and familiarizing themselves with the bits and bytes of digital money to drive sustainable growth.