SAS Partners with DIB to Elevate Financial Crime Risk Management
SAS, the market leader in Data and AI, has partnered with DIB, the world’s first Islamic bank and the largest in the UAE, to upgrade its Anti-Money Laundering (AML) platform and advance financial crime compliance capabilities, deployed on SAS hosted cloud services, supported by Microsoft.
This strategic collaboration, announced at GITEX 2025, reflects DIB’s commitment to staying ahead of evolving regulatory requirements and leveraging advanced technologies to ensure compliance with the global standards and meet industry-specific compliance requirements.
Recognizing the rapid advancements in regulatory frameworks and the increasing complexity of financial crime, DIB is advancing to SAS Viya 4 – a cloud-native, AI-powered analytics platform running on Microsoft Azure– building on its longstanding relationship with SAS. The upgrade will not only modernize compliance operations but also support the bank’s broader digital transformation agenda.
Abdul Waheed Rathore, Group Chief Compliance Officer at DIB said: “Safeguarding the integrity of our operations and maintaining customer trust are foundational to everything we do. In today’s increasingly complex regulatory environment, our partnership with SAS reflects a strategic move to elevate our compliance capabilities which equips us with greater agility, precision, and insight to proactively combat financial crime, while reinforcing our enterprise-wide commitment to strong governance and risk resilience.”
As part of this transformation, DIB will implement SAS’s Financial Crime Analytics — an advanced suite powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) — to strengthen its ability to detect and mitigate financial crimes.
The platform will deliver faster, deeper insights, empowering the bank to proactively detect, assess, and mitigate financial crime risks with greater accuracy and efficiency
“SAS is proud to support DIB in advancing its financial crime strategy and digital compliance ambitions,” said Michel Ghorayeb, Managing Director, SAS UAE. “Our advanced analytics, AI, and cloud technologies are designed to empower leading organizations like DIB to remain resilient against emerging financial crime threats while ensuring operational efficiency and regulatory compliance.
Deployed in cloud with SAS-hosted managed services, we are offering a combination of technology and expertise to deliver exceptional results and safeguard DIB’s customers.”
Imane El Majdoubi, Enterprise Commercial Director, Microsoft UAE stated: “At Microsoft UAE, we are proud to support DIB’s digital transformation journey by providing secure, scalable, and AI-powered Azure cloud capabilities.
By partnering with SAS and DIB, we are enabling advanced analytics and compliance solutions that help DIB proactively detect and mitigate financial crime risks, while ensuring regulatory compliance and operational excellence.”
This upgrade is part of DIB’s continued investment in future-ready compliance infrastructure and innovation-led transformation.
It reinforces the bank’s long-term commitment to operational excellence and regulatory resilience, while aligning with the UAE’s national vision to position itself as a global hub for financial innovation, transparency, and governance leadership.
