Mashreq’s performance reflected the continued evolution and impact of one of the Middle East’s most advanced digital banking strategies, built around digital-first distribution, intelligent automation and scalable technology platforms across retail, SME and corporate banking.
“Banking is being fundamentally rethought, and Mashreq has chosen to be at the centre of that transformation rather than simply responding to it,” says Ahmed Abdelaal, group chief executive officer, Mashreq. “Several years ago, we made a deliberate decision to rebuild the bank from its core, not just to digitise existing processes but to create a fundamentally different, purpose-driven operating model. This reflects our long-term strategy and our commitment to building a resilient, future-ready institution that combines our deep regional heritage and relationship strengths with the agility and digital capabilities required in a highly interconnected world.”
The bank’s approach has moved well beyond digitising existing processes towards rebuilding banking journeys around speed, personalisation and embedded access. Its investments have focused on cloud-native infrastructure, artificial intelligence, API connectivity and mobile-first experiences, supporting expansion across existing and new markets.
A defining example was Mashreq’s international digital expansion. Building on its UAE capabilities, the bank launched Pakistan’s first cloud-native digital bank, creating a fully digital proposition designed for one of the world’s largest underbanked markets. The platform offers paperless onboarding in under five minutes, more than 85% straight-through processing, AI-powered customer support and an API-driven, modular architecture. It onboarded more than 100,000 customers in the three months after launch and issued over 70,000 debit cards while also processing nearly one million payment transactions in a relatively short period.
In the UAE, Mashreq continued to deepen digital engagement through targeted propositions and product innovation. NEO PLUS, its digital-only emerging-affluent segment, attracted more than 140,000 customers and generated over AED4 billion ($1.09 billion) in new liabilities.
Taking digital further
Meanwhile, its digital mortgage platform transformed a traditionally manual process, generating instant approvals through automated decision making, real-time checks and data capture. The platform sourced 88% of salaried mortgage applications in 2025 and generated more than AED3.6 billion in digital approvals.
Digital wealth was another area of progress. Mashreq expanded its app-based wealth ecosystem, combining self-directed investing, hybrid advisory and relationship manager-supported execution. The platform provides access to more than 30,000 global securities across 22 markets, while approximately 98% of equities, mutual funds and bonds are now purchased digitally. In 2025, the wealth business recorded a 37% increase in new investors, 23% growth in assets under management, and 17% revenue growth.
Technology underpins every aspect of our operating model, enabling smarter decisions, stronger risk management and greater scalability across markets
Ahmed Abdelaal
For SMEs, Mashreq continued to strengthen NEO BIZ as a fully digital banking ecosystem covering onboarding, payments, foreign exchange, trade, lending and servicing. Digital enhancements reduced onboarding times for less complex SME accounts to two days, increased monthly new-to-bank digital acquisitions by 120% and helped grow digitally acquired balances by AED9 billion. The bank now serves more than 100,000 SMEs in the UAE, giving it more than 20% market share, while achieving an app rating of 4.9.
The bank also continued to digitise SME lending and trade processes. Merchant lending approval times were reduced from more than 12 days to under six, while relationship manager productivity increased by around 30%. New digital trade capabilities reduced trade-related call centre queries by 35% and allowed SME clients to start eligible trade requests, track transactions in real time and manage document collection digitally.
Corporate digital adoption
Mashreq NEO CORP has become the core of a broader digital ecosystem integrating cash management, payments, trade and collections. Corporate digital adoption accelerated, with 76% of clients active on online banking and 83% using mobile services. Its API marketplace, offering more than 20 APIs and sandbox capabilities, supports embedded finance and integration with enterprise resource planning and treasury management systems, with the proportion of large corporate clients actively using APIs increasing threefold year-on-year.
Underpinning these advances is Mashreq’s Digital Innovation Studio, which has grown from five specialists in 2020 to more than 200. Advanced analytics and generative AI initiatives from the studio supported more than 30% year-on-year growth in incremental revenues, while corporate onboarding became fully paperless and mobile-enabled thanks to in-house innovations, allowing relationship managers to open accounts in under two minutes.
“Technology underpins every aspect of our operating model, enabling smarter decisions, stronger risk management and greater scalability across markets,” says Abdelaal. “Combined with our deep relationships and regional expertise, it allows us to deliver more relevant solutions and connect clients with new opportunities.”
Across customer segments, Mashreq’s performance reflected a digital strategy focused not just on adoption but on fundamentally changing how customers access and experience banking.
