Seventy-one per cent of the firms that answered the DFSA's 2026 AI survey said they used at least one form of AI, against 52% in 2025 and 33% in 2024, the Dubai regulator said on 2 November. The annual survey, now in its third year, covers financial services firms authorised by the DFSA in the Dubai International Financial Centre; the figures describe respondents, not every firm in the centre.
Generative AI drove the increase. Its use rose from 22% of respondents in 2024 to 67% in 2026, and 94% of AI adopters used it. Most of that use is internal: 91% of generative AI users apply it in functions such as HR, legal or finance, and 52% use it within internal systems and controls, up from 39% in 2025. Client-facing use rose only from 33% to 36%.
Many deployments remain small. Seventy-four per cent of adopters said at least some applications were pilots or used in only a small part of a business area, although 39% now reported deployment across a considerable share of a business area, up from 23% in 2024. More than half of respondents (53%) were exploring, testing, piloting or deploying AI agents, but only 14% had reached deployment.
Governance is still developing. Sixty-one per cent of adopters had an AI governance framework, 53% had organisational AI policies and 41% kept an inventory of AI use cases. Reliance on outside providers is growing: 75% of generative AI users used third-party applications, and 73% of adopters ran 91% to 100% of their AI applications on cloud platforms. The DFSA said this can add data-security, service-continuity and concentration risks.
The regulator said it will use the findings in its risk-based supervision, including its annual technology and cyber-risk self-assessment and its review of firms' material AI use.
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Dubai Financial Services Authority ↗Regulator · 2 Nov 2026
This is an original brief based on the linked publication. Company statements and forecasts are attributed to their source.
