A three day conference in Riyadh bringing together financial services, fintech, technology, investment and regulation
The technology is available. The capability to govern it and integrate it into how an institution works is not.
CFTE attended Money20/20 Middle East in Riyadh from 14 to 16 September 2026. The event was hosted by the Financial Sector Development Program with the Saudi Central Bank, the Capital Market Authority and the Insurance Authority, and co-organised by Tahaluf and Fintech Saudi.
Programming across the three days covered moving AI from pilot to production, building AI-native institutions, the role of human judgement, agentic AI governance, payments and embedded finance. The final day widened into stablecoins, tokenisation, open financial ecosystems and the future of investing.
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Sessions returned to why AI pilots fail to reach production. Data access, governance, model monitoring and integration with systems not designed for AI were the constraints most often named.
Discussion moved from technology adoption to operating models: how institutions govern AI, assign accountability for it and embed it in processes that already exist.
As systems move from recommending to acting, panels examined where liability sits when an autonomous decision causes loss, and what governance holds up under audit rather than policy review.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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CFTE is AI capability infrastructure for financial institutions, regulators, central banks and governments. The work below sets out how we read the capability question, and where an institution can start.
Three published works on AI's effect on roles, on workforce capability and on institutional decision making.
An executive programme for the people responsible for turning an institution's AI strategy into delivered work.
A structured assessment of what an organisation can currently do with AI, used as the starting point for capability planning.
