The latest edition of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) Banking Pulse analyzes the FY 2025 performance of the kingdom’s ten largest listed banks. The year reflects resilience and rebalancing in the Saudi banking sector, with moderating credit growth alongside strong profitability, improved asset quality, and solid balance sheet strength, supported by a favorable macro-outlook and ongoing Vision 2030 momentum.

Atomic settlement is moving from experiment to market infrastructure. Whilst banks, asset managers, and market commentators often frame narratives around distributed-ledger settlement as a new product or asset class, its biggest implications are architectural.

Banks across the GCC remain resilient as they navigate evolving market dynamics, with a focus on liquidity, credit quality, and seamless operations across markets. Our senior experts have developed a hands-on perspective outlining how these institutions are responding, with key considerations across liquidity and risk management, supply chain stabilization, and operational resilience - supported by clear actions across governance, funding, and portfolio management.

Financial institutions do not have a core banking problem. They have a decisioning problem. For decades, banks optimized Systems of Record (SoR) to post transactions with precision and maintain regulatory integrity. That battle has largely been won. What now differentiates institutions is not how accurately they book activity, but how intelligently and quickly they make decisions.