As banking becomes more digitally-focused, it is becoming critically important for banks across the globe to embrace digital transformation, implementing more intelligent and embedded systems into their operations.
To reveal how banks are adapting to keep up with the increasingly tech-driven and hyper-personalised world, Miguel Rio-Tinto, group chief digital and information officer at Emirates NBD, breaks down the significant opportunities and challenges for banks embarking on their digital transformation journeys.
Before the bank attends the third edition of the Dubai FinTech Summit, the premier event focused on the future of fintech and finance organised by the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Rio-Tinto explains how Emirates NBD is embracing emerging technologies, including AI and blockchain, with an end goal of offering a banking experience integrated into consumers’ everyday lives.
Reshaping banking’s core: Beyond digital channels
As Emirates NBD’s group CIO and CDO, Rio-Tinto possesses a unique perspective on the future of banking. Speaking to The Fintech Times, he explains how the next wave of digital transformation in banking could reshape the core of financial institutions.
“The first wave of digital transformation focused on accessibility—bringing banking to customers through mobile apps and online platforms. But the next wave goes much deeper. It is about reimagining the core of banking – how a bank runs, scales and adapts – not just its interfaces.
“We are embedding banking into everyday life by modernising from the inside out. At Emirates NBD, we are building real-time, cloud-native platforms that support embedded finance and open banking. These are foundational shifts that allow us to become more agile, intelligent, and ecosystem-ready.
“The future of banking goes beyond a customer interacting through a screen. It is about becoming part of the customer’s world, offering context-aware, proactive, and secure services. Whether through Banking-as-a-Service partnerships or agentic AI that guides financial decisions, we are moving toward an experience that is seamless and fully integrated into daily life.”
“Digital is no longer just about access. It is becoming the foundation of how banks operate.”
Emerging tech: High-stakes opportunities
The hype surrounding AI, blockchain and quantum computing continues to grow, and for good reason. All of these emerging technologies promise significant potential, as Rio-Tinto explains, but also present new risks.
“These technologies are unlocking new possibilities across the financial services industry. AI is already transforming how we operate at Emirates NBD—from document intelligence in trade finance to proactive fraud detection and intelligent customer interactions. We have invested in a robust AI infrastructure, including our own compute capabilities, and we use both regional and international cloud models based on the nature of the use case.
“Blockchain presents opportunities in areas such as tokenised assets and real-time settlement, particularly in private markets. We are actively exploring how it can improve efficiency and transparency in private markets. However, the pace of adoption will depend on how quickly legal and regulatory frameworks evolve.
“Quantum computing, while still emerging, is on our radar. We have already started integrating post-quantum encryption standards to ensure our systems remain secure as these technologies evolve.
“As with any emerging technology, governance remains essential. Our focus is on responsible adoption—ensuring transparency, mitigating bias in models, and continuously reviewing outcomes to maintain trust and control. That is why we established an AI governance framework to ensure that innovation happens responsibly and in line with our values.”
“AI is no longer a mere experiment. It’s an integrated capability across our architecture.”
Cloud strategy: Lessons from the trenches
As Emirates NBD continues to embark on its own cloud journey, Rio-Tinto breaks down the lessons the Dubai-based bank has learned so far.
“Today, 100 per cent of our workloads operate on a hybrid cloud environment, combining private and public cloud infrastructure. This strategic approach gives us the flexibility to innovate at scale while ensuring we meet stringent data privacy and regulatory requirements.
“Our hybrid model allows us to place the right workloads in the right environments—optimising performance, compliance, and business agility. It gives us the resilience and elasticity we need to support a modern digital bank.
“What truly differentiates our journey is the strength of our internal capability. We’ve built an engineering-led culture that enables us to modernise platforms, reduce legacy dependency, and adapt swiftly to emerging technologies.”
“Cloud unlocks scale and speed, but true agility comes from building the right internal capabilities.”
Hyper-personalisation vs. privacy: The trust equation
Unsurprisingly, consumer expectations are rising around hyper-personalisation. But the importance of balancing technological innovation with data privacy and trust remains critical, particularly for the likes of Emirates NBD.
“Personalisation today must transcend traditional marketing. It should feel natural, not intrusive,” Rio-Tinto explains. “At Emirates NBD, we have embedded ‘privacy by design’ into the architecture of our digital experiences. For instance, our wealth app uses federated learning—AI that analyses trends without exporting raw data.
“We also give clients a ‘data dashboard’ to control what’s shared. These tools let them decide how their information is used, and we have seen that this openness increases trust. When customers understand how their data improves their experience, like detecting fraud faster, they opt in and are more comfortable engaging deeply with our services.
“All of this is built into the broader ecosystem of digital banking we have created. From real-time account updates to self-directed trading and seamless credit onboarding, our experiences are designed to be personalised, secure, and respectful of customer choices.”
“The best personalisation feels like intuition, not intrusion.”
The bank of 2030: More than money
With AI and other emerging technologies already drastically changing the face of the banking industry across the globe, will banks like Emirates NBD still be ‘banks’ in the future? Could they evolve into something much broader? To find out, we asked Rio-Tinto.
“The bank of the future is poised to evolve far beyond the traditional role of a financial institution. We are moving from being product providers to becoming integrated platforms that support every aspect of our customers’ financial lives.
“By 2030, banking will be intelligent and embedded. It will happen automatically and, in the background, whether that means offering instant financing at checkout or optimising a wealth portfolio based on real-time life events. It will feel less like a transaction and more like an experience.
“At Emirates NBD, we are building the foundation for this now. We are investing in intelligent platforms, open APIs, and advanced AI decisioning engines. Our goal is to make financial services intuitive, responsive, and deeply embedded in a customer’s way of life.
“But the ‘bank’ label will remain—because trust is timeless. What changes is how we deliver it: not through branches but through invisible, intelligent ecosystems.”
“By 2030, banking will be an intelligent ecosystem – always available and integrated into everyday life.”
