SAS Honored with Financial Technology - Outstanding Leadership and Growth Award at GITEX 2024

SAS, the leader in analytics and AI, proudly received the Financial Technology - Outstanding Leadership and Growth Award from MEA Business Magazine during GITEX 2024. This prestigious recognition highlights SAS’s transformative contributions to the financial sector in the Middle East, cementing its role as a trusted partner for regional innovation and growth.

With over 47 years of expertise in analytics-driven innovation, SAS has consistently delivered advanced solutions that address the complex needs of financial institutions.

Built on a deep-rooted understanding of financial markets, SAS has consistently anticipated trends and formed long-term partnerships that deliver exceptional value. In 2019, as regional regulations began to shift, many financial institutions turned to SAS to lead their digital transformation journeys.

SAS’s enterprise platform became the go-to solution for financial organizations seeking to modernize and scale efficiently. From detecting fraudulent activities to streamlining compliance processes, SAS solutions have fundamentally transformed how banks and financial institutions operate, providing the tools necessary to stay ahead of the regulatory curve.

Addressing Unique Regional Challenges

The Middle East region faces distinct challenges, including rising fraudulent activities, fragmented solutions that lack a holistic view of customers, and a significant skills gap in fraud management.

With the added pressure of meeting both local and international regulatory standards, such as those set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), regional banks are under immense scrutiny. SAS has empowered public and private organizations alike by offering advanced compliance solutions and cutting-edge fraud detection systems. For example, one of the region’s leading banks saw its fraud detection rate increase fourfold after adopting SAS’s solutions.

SAS enables banks to combat financial crime with precision, leveraging AI, machine learning, and deep domain expertise. SAS’s comprehensive solutions provide a holistic view of financial crime risk, allowing banks to detect anomalies and emerging threats in real time.

By utilizing dynamic segmentation and peer groupings, SAS reduces false positives, improving fraud detection accuracy and operational efficiency. Predictive analytics and model-based scenarios enable proactive identification of threats, leading to a reduction in fraud losses.

SAS’s cross-channel detection capabilities further enhance financial institutions' ability to monitor and analyze customer behavior across various channels. This allows banks to efficiently manage large transaction volumes, without compromising detection quality.

Success Story: Transforming Fraud Detection in the Middle East

One of SAS’s most notable success stories in the region involved a leading bank in the Middle East that aimed to enhance its financial crime detection and reporting capabilities. By deploying SAS’s AI-powered Financial Crime Analytics (FCA) solution, equipped with advanced convolutional neural networks, automatic pattern recognition, and continuous model improvement features, the bank achieved significant operational improvements within just six months.

Key outcomes included:

• A 55% reduction in false-positive alerts, enabling the compliance team to focus on more critical cases.
• A 25% increase in Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) yield, resulting in more accurate and meaningful reports.
• A 29% increase in SAR filings, ensuring better regulatory compliance and risk management.
• Optimization of over 60 inefficient scenarios, along with the improvement of an additional 50 scenarios, enhancing overall system performance and detection accuracy.

This deployment has significantly enhanced the bank’s ability to manage financial crime risks while boosting operational efficiency.

Innovating for the Future

SAS continues to drive innovation in the financial sector by delivering cutting-edge solutions that empower organizations to thrive in an increasingly complex environment. One of the emerging trends SAS is focused on is Synthetic Data Generation, which allows financial institutions to rapidly augment or generate data, enabling them to tackle evolving fraud patterns and regulatory demands more effectively.

Additionally, SAS is harnessing the potential of emerging technologies such as Generative AI (GenAI) and Graph Data Science to accelerate analytical tasks, boost productivity, and improve decision-making across various business domains. These innovations will soon be implemented at some of the largest banks in the GCC, further solidifying SAS’s role as a pioneer in analytics-driven financial transformation.

SAS’s forward-thinking solutions provide a strong foundation for financial institutions to not only keep pace with market shifts but also drive sustainable growth, ensure regulatory compliance, and maintain a competitive edge in an ever-evolving industry. By empowering institutions today, SAS is preparing them for the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.