Two UAE banks, Emirates NBD and First Abu Dhabi Bank, have topped an index tracking the use of responsible artificial intelligence, receiving recognition for their role in narrowing the gap in adoption between the banking and finance sector in the Middle East and Africa and global peers.The lenders were ranked first and third, respectively, by the Evident AI Index Banks report released on Tuesday. The index tracks how lenders in the region leverage AI and navigate its transformational effects throughout their operations.Another UAE bank, Mashreq, was ranked 10th, while Saudi Arabia's Al Rahji Bank, at ninth, was the Gulf region's other top 10 entry.The top 25 also included Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Qatar National Bank, National Bank of Kuwait, Riyad Bank, Dubai Islamic Bank, Kuwait Finance House, Saudi National Bank and Saudi Awwal Bank.The index was compiled by Evident, a London-based market intelligence firm that tracks AI adoption across financial services. It surveyed more than 100 companies, which also included insurers and payments processors. Evident has tracked 50 banks since 2023.The rankings were determined across four weighted metrics – talent, innovation, leadership and transparency, with talent the highest at 45 per cent. Emirates NBD ranked high in leadership, innovation and talent, while FAB topped in transparency and leadership.The study said that the strategies of Emirates NBD, Dubai's largest lender by assets, and FAB, the UAE's largest, are aligned with the Middle East and Africa's digital ambitions, which including smart onboarding, AI-powered customer engagement platforms and enhanced risk analytics.Those are often closely linked to broader national strategies that revolve around digital transformation, which in turn creates an ecosystem-level tailwind that accelerates adoption, it noted.The top four banks in the index – which include Standard Bank Group and Nedbank Group, both from South Africa – “uniformly identify AI as a strategic objective”, offering AI training, establishing AI governance committees and documenting AI use cases that produce measurable outcomes, said Colin Gilbert, vice president for intelligence at Evident.Evident noted that Emirates NBD “explicitly” links AI to enterprise productivity, operational modernisation and the UAE’s national AI agenda. It is also the only bank in the ranking that placed in the top three across more than two metrics.FAB, meanwhile, has put “the strongest emphasis” on building AI at scale. One of its strongest points of differentiation is the evidence of agentic AI within its core banking operations, including in payment processing, relationship management and developer augmentation.Agentic AI is designed to make autonomous decisions and act with minimal human supervision compared with the more commonly used generative AI. Authorities in the Emirates have recently put agentic AI at the top of the technology agenda.The Evident study said First Abu Dhabi Bank placed 'the strongest emphasis' on building AI at scale. ReutersInfoLast month, the UAE unveiled plans to train 80,000 workers – from ministers to junior employees – in the use of AI agents to ensure half of government services are delivered by the emerging technology within two years. In addition, Dubai announced a two-year action plan to harness the technology in the emirate's private sector in an effort to secure a “competitive edge” in the global workplace of the future.“From a practical perspective, responsible AI is growing in importance across banking in MEA because many institutions are attempting to scale AI deployment in environments characterised by fragmented regulation, uneven data quality, rapid digitalisation and heightened sensitivity around fairness, explainability and cyber risk,” Mr Gilbert told The National before the report's release.“That's the current state of play, the current gap regional leaders are attempting to close, when we compare them to global peers headquartered in North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific.”Evident also says the prospect of AI taking over human jobs is not apparent in its study. This is because the incremental business that results from AI increasing productivity drives more – and not less – new hires, and headcount is more likely to expand among the most mature AI banks, Mr Gilbert said.“While a frequent topic of debate, we don’t see this coming through in our data. We can’t identify a significant drawdown in overall headcount numbers that’s not associated with restructuring from a major merger or acquisition,” he said.