Retail banking in the Middle East has enjoyed a period of healthy growth, but the underlying dynamics are increasingly nuanced. Euromoney’s first retail banking performance ranking unveils how the fastest-growing banks in the region are not just adding new customers but also growing their deposits and loan books.
Buoyant home economies, international growth and expatriate inflows all fuelled growth among Middle Eastern retail banks in 2025 – even if the Iran conflict now clouds the outlook.
This report benchmarks the fastest-growing retail banks in the Middle East over 2024-25, based on customer numbers, revenues, deposits and loans, from a mix of proprietary and public sources. Regional banks grew customer numbers by 10% on average in 2025. Growth in retail revenue and deposits averaged 8% and 11%, respectively, while loans growth accelerated at 9%.
But this growth was not uniform. Emirates NBD topped the ranking in terms of customer numbers, retail lending and deposit flows, while Qatar National Bank (QNB) was slightly ahead in the revenue growth ranking. Home-market dynamism and international growth similarly saw Dubai-based Mashreq post growth metrics well above the Middle Eastern market average in 2025.
In Saudi Arabia, Alrajhi Bank performed exceptionally well in terms of customer-relationship growth. However, Saudi banks have on average seen more muted growth than the UAE banks, across all metrics.
The contrast in the pace of Saudi retail lending was especially marked versus UAE banks, amid wider funding pressures in Saudi banking and a slowdown in the mortgage market compared with earlier this decade. Saudi retail deposit and revenue growth rates were also markedly lower than those of UAE banks.
Based on proprietary and public data, this report assesses banks by absolute growth in consumer banking to reflect the scale and economic significance of expansion, ensuring the rankings capture meaningful shifts in position rather than relative gains from a low base. Percentage changes provide additional context.
The report shows how the structure of the Middle Eastern banking sector may be evolving. New entrants demonstrate that large-scale customer acquisition can be achieved rapidly through digital means, and multi-bank relationships are becoming more common as consumers spread their financial lives across providers. Yet while digital challengers have acquired customers rapidly, they are still lower down the rankings by revenues and balance sheet.
Neobanks: Scaling fast, monetising later
Neobanks are one of the most striking growth stories in Middle East retail banking, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where regulators have enabled the emergence of new digital entrants.
In the UAE, Mbank has achieved one of the highest customer acquisition volumes anywhere in the region, aided by onboarding in under five minutes and an in-app loyalty programme offering discounts on restaurants, hotels, travel and entertainment. Wio Bank, another new UAE digital player, also recorded strong growth in retail deposits, although its loan book remains small. Wio’s new salary plan linking salary inflows to automated savings, preferential rates and rewards has fuelled its growth.
STC Bank only began operating as a fully licensed bank in early 2025 after converting from the STC Pay e-wallet of Saudi Arabia’s largest telco, and for this reason is not officially included in the ranking. But in under a year, it has already built a customer base of more than eight million in a population of 35 million. Built on cloud-native infrastructure, STC Bank has a strong focus on underserved segments such as youth and blue-collar workers, offering instant in-app loans and cashback on everyday spending. It could be a key player for the future.
Fast-growing incumbents: Deepening relationships
Unlike in other global markets, most Middle East neobanks still struggle to match the scale of customer acquisition by the top-performing incumbents. Among the incumbents, the strongest performers are differentiated not by how effectively they defend and extend their positions through new customer acquisition and client engagement.
At Emirates NBD, payroll-linked acquisition through corporate relationships has in part fuelled its growth, especially in high-value relationships, notably in its home market. As the largest payroll acquirer in the UAE, Emirates NBD’s model anchors customer acquisition in salary accounts, providing a stable, low-cost funding base and a platform for cross-sell.
Saudi Arabia’s Alrajhi Bank, the world’s biggest Islamic bank, performed particularly well in defending its position in consumer banking in 2025. It marked up far higher absolute and percentage growth in customers than domestic peers SNB and Riyad Bank.
Alrajhi’s ‘harmonise the group’ strategy has shifted its focus since 2024 towards integration and monetisation of group consumer capabilities that were previously less closely connected. The new strategy is centred on building a financial ecosystem across the bank and its subsidiaries, enabling a broader and more coordinated approach to customer engagement.
By integrating offerings across the group – including microfinance, payments, wealth and insurance – Alrajhi aims to increase share of wallet and embed itself more deeply in customers’ financial lives. In this context, tools such as the Mokafaa loyalty programme – serving more than 16 million members – act as enablers, reinforcing transaction activity and linking customer behaviour across the wider ecosystem.
Alrajhi has also identified priority segments – including premium, expatriate, family and mass-market customers – and is developing tailored value propositions for each, reflecting changing demographics and evolving financial needs within the Saudi market.
International growth: leveraging home-market strengths
Retail banking growth in the Middle East has historically been rooted in home markets, but shaped by cross-border dynamics – particularly expatriate inflows and regional trade corridors. Some banks, however, are increasingly leveraging those home-market strengths to expand internationally, including via digital capabilities, in their wider neighbourhood.
QNB’s home-market growth potential is limited given the small size of the Qatari market and its existing scale there. It still managed to grow customer numbers in Qatar to 405,230 in 2025 from 389,583 in 2024. And across the QNB Group – which includes especially large operations in Egypt and Turkey – customer numbers rose from 30.4 million to 32.3 million.
Emirates NBD is another case in point. Its international retail franchise – which already includes one of Turkey’s largest banks – constituted a growing part of the overall retail revenue mix in 2025, delivering 28% revenue growth year-on-year. In October, the bank agreed to acquire India’s RBL Bank for $3 billion – the largest-ever foreign direct investment in the Indian financial services sector.
In addition to acquisitions of banks in Turkey and Egypt in the 2010s, Emirates NBD has scaled its presence in Saudi Arabia from a single branch to more than 20 locations in this decade. Its 2025 rollout of its ENBD X mobile app in Saudi Arabia further highlights how deploying cross-border digital infrastructure can reduce the cost of expansion.
Mashreq is putting an even stronger emphasis on digital-first internationalisation. Its 2025 launch of Pakistan’s first cloud-native digital bank demonstrates how global platforms can be deployed into underbanked markets with significant speed, onboarding more than 100,000 customers within three months.
In Egypt, similarly, Mashreq is focusing on digital acquisition and ecosystem-led distribution rather than traditional branch expansion. The rollout of fully digital credit-card onboarding drove a 50% uplift in acquisition, while its banking-as-a-service integration with telecom platform e& now contributes to around 30% of digital credit-card leads.
Looking ahead
In 2026, the Iran conflict and wider geopolitical tensions increasingly shape the regional outlook for Middle Eastern retail banks, affecting consumer confidence, cross-border flows and investment activity. This may lead to more cautious lending growth and shifts in deposit behaviour. At the same time, international expansion may become a more important lever of growth, notably as Emirates NBD completes its acquisition of RBL Bank and as Mashreq’s international digital banks gain momentum.
Funding and relationship dynamics will remain central to performance. Banks with strong current and savings account franchises, payroll-linked acquisition models and high levels of customer engagement will be better positioned to sustain growth.
Whatever the geopolitical landscape, the rise of digital-first challengers will intensify competitive pressure. As these neobanks mature, the key question will shift from growth to monetisation. Their ability to deepen engagement, expand lending and generate sustainable revenues will determine whether they remain complementary players or begin to erode incumbents’ share of wallet more structurally.
Learn more about the methodology. For more on our retail banking benchmarking and insights, contact Euromoney’s head of retail banking Dominic O’Neill.
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