Dubai: As banks accelerate their digital transformation, the focus is increasingly shifting from adopting technology to demonstrating how it improves customer experience and delivers measurable business value.
Following the Dubai FinTech Summit 2026, Thomas Cherian, Chief Technology & Services Officer at Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD), spoke about the bank’s technology strategy, its move towards becoming an AI-first bank, the growing role of digital workers and Agentic AI, and its approach to partnerships, security and human oversight.
CBD has made significant investments in digital infrastructure, cloud technologies and artificial intelligence. How are these investments translating into tangible benefits for customers and businesses, and how do you measure whether a technology investment has delivered meaningful value?
Thomas Cherian: For us at CBD, it really comes down to outcomes. We don’t measure technology investment by how much technology we deploy. We look at what has actually changed for our customers and for the business.
Falcon 2.0 is a good example. It’s about using technology and data to simplify the way we work and make banking easier for our customers. We’re already seeing tangible results. Wholesale banking transfers are now 58% faster, and error resolution has improved by 53%.
More importantly, we’re seeing that reflected in what our customers are telling us. Our digital banking CSAT has reached a peak of around 92, and our Contact Centre NPS is around 65. For me, that’s a very healthy sign that the continuous improvements we’re making are being felt by our customers, not just measured internally.
We take the same view with AI. Of course, we look at adoption and productivity, but those numbers alone don’t tell you whether the investment is successful. Is it helping us respond faster? Are we reducing errors? Are we giving our people more time to focus on customers and higher-value work? Those are the measures that matter.
The test is quite simple: are we making banking easier, faster and more reliable for our customers, while also making CBD more efficient and responsive? If we are doing both, then the technology investment is delivering real value.
As CBD advances its digital transformation, where do you see the next major areas of technology investment for the bank? What customer or business challenges will these investments be designed to address?
Thomas Cherian: I see the next phase as moving from digital transformation towards becoming an AI-first bank. We’ve built a strong digital foundation, and now the opportunity is to use AI much more deeply across the bank.
A key part of that will be digital workers, working alongside our people to handle repetitive and process-heavy activities. This will help us operate more efficiently, reduce errors, scale more easily and free up our teams to focus on customers and higher-value work.
Project Atlas is strategic to this journey. It gives us a structured way to scale AI across the bank while ensuring we have the right governance and controls in place. More importantly, it helps us move from individual AI use cases to AI becoming part of how we operate every day.
Ultimately, it’s not about AI for the sake of AI. It’s about creating a bank that is faster, more efficient and easier to deal with, while delivering a better experience for our customers.
AI is moving rapidly from experimentation to practical application across financial services. How is CBD integrating AI into its operations and customer proposition, and which areas of banking do you believe have the greatest potential to be transformed by AI?
Thomas Cherian: We’ve moved beyond experimenting with AI. The focus now is on putting it to work in practical areas where it can make a real difference for our customers and our people.
A big part of that is preparing the organisation. Around 1,300 colleagues have completed our AI literacy programme, and Microsoft Copilot adoption has reached 92%.
A good example of AI in action is Merlin, which we developed internally to support credit applications. It helps analyse financial information and prepare credit proposals, improving speed and consistency, while the final decision and accountability remain with our people.
Looking ahead, I see significant potential in credit, payments, trade finance, operations and customer service. These are areas where AI and digital workers can take away repetitive work, reduce errors, speed up processes and allow our people to spend more time with customers and on higher-value activities.
The next step will be Agentic AI, where AI can support more complex processes across multiple steps rather than just individual tasks. But we will scale this responsibly, with the right security, governance and human oversight.
How does CBD approach technology partnerships and decide where external expertise can complement its internal capabilities?
Thomas Cherian: Technology partnerships are an important enabler of innovation, helping banks accelerate transformation and scale emerging capabilities.
At CBD, we retain ownership of our technology strategy, governance and operations, while partnering with specialist providers that can complement internal capabilities and accelerate execution.
Our Digital Factory enables internal innovation through agile delivery, API-first engineering, automation and continuous integration. Partnerships, meanwhile, provide access to specialised expertise and technologies that enhance our ability to innovate at scale.
Successful partnerships are built on more than technology alone. Strategic partners must demonstrate a strong understanding of banking, robust security and governance standards, seamless integration capabilities and a clear ability to deliver measurable business outcomes.
As AI adoption accelerates, collaboration between banks, fintechs and technology providers will become increasingly important, while accountability for risk, compliance and oversight remains with the bank.
How does CBD decide which capabilities should be developed internally and which are better pursued through partnerships? What does a fintech or technology company need to offer to become a strategically valuable partner for CBD?
Thomas Cherian: As banking becomes increasingly digital and AI-driven, cybersecurity, resilience and data protection must remain at the centre of every technology decision. For us, it’s not really a choice between building everything ourselves or partnering for everything.
We look at where we need to own the capability and where a partner can help us move faster or bring expertise that would take time to build internally.
If something is core to how we differentiate, how we serve our customers, or involves critical data and decision-making, we want to retain strong ownership. At the same time, partnerships allow us to bring in specialist capabilities, new ideas and proven technology, and get them into the bank much faster.
A good example is our work with Microsoft. The relationship has evolved beyond being a traditional technology collaboration. We’re working together on areas such as cloud and AI, and more recently on our ambition to scale Agentic AI across customer experience, employee productivity and banking operations.
When we look at a fintech or technology partner, the technology itself is only one part of the equation. We look for a clear business problem they can solve, the ability to operate securely and at scale, how well they fit into our technology environment, and whether they are prepared to innovate with us over the longer term.
A strategically valuable partner is one that brings something distinctive, helps us move faster and, most importantly, creates measurable value for our customers and the bank.
Greater digitalisation also brings greater responsibility around cybersecurity, fraud prevention and data protection. As banking becomes increasingly automated and AI-driven, how does CBD balance speed and convenience with security, privacy and customer trust? Are there areas where human judgement should remain central despite advances in automation?
Thomas Cherian: For us, security and customer trust are not trade-offs against speed and convenience. They have to go together.
As banking becomes more digital and AI-driven, customers expect things to be faster and easier, but they also expect us to protect their money, their data and their privacy.
That means security, fraud prevention and data protection need to be built into everything we do from the beginning, rather than added afterwards. As we introduce more automation and AI, we also need clear controls around what AI can do, what data it can access and where human oversight is required.
And I do believe there are areas where human judgement must remain central. Decisions involving significant financial risk, regulatory responsibility or customer impact should not simply be left to an algorithm. AI can provide better information, identify patterns and help people make decisions faster, but accountability ultimately has to remain with our people.
So the balance is quite simple: use technology to make banking faster and easier, but never at the expense of security, privacy or trust. In banking, trust is ultimately what everything else is built on.
