Financial Services

Saudi Arabia’s financial sector is operating under a different level of intensity than it did even a few years ago, shaped by regulatory expansion, new market entrants, and a broader set of financial activities across banking, capital markets, and fintech.

 

SAMA has complemented traditional supervision with more proactive enablement of sector modernization - licensing digital banks, advancing open banking, and raising expectations around cybersecurity, data, and risk management. In parallel, the CMA, Tadawul, and the Insurance Authority have supported the continued deepening of capital markets and risk markets, with a wider range of instruments including REITs, sukuk and bond listings, and derivatives.

 

Alongside this, PIF’s role has shifted. Its portfolio companies are expected to anchor sectors, attract private capital, and operate with stronger governance and performance discipline. This has raised expectations not only for PIF-backed entities, but for the financial institutions that support, finance, and interact with them.

 

As institutions expand across products, channels, and markets, decision-making becomes distributed across business leadership, risk, compliance, and Shariah boards, and at times extends into regulatory engagement with SAMA or the CMA. Each layer is necessary. The difficulty is that these layers are not always aligned in how decisions are framed, sequenced, or concluded.

 

What follows is not simply delay. It is variation. Similar decisions are handled differently across business lines, approvals are revisited after being considered final, and ownership becomes less clear once decisions move beyond the initial forum.

 

Over time, this creates inconsistency in how decisions are documented, interpreted, and applied—particularly in environments where regulatory, Shariah, and internal governance expectations need to be met simultaneously.