Half of those surveyed estimate their institution loses more than $10 million every 

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Aug. 19, 2026) — A new survey of fraud-management, anti-money laundering (AML), and compliance team leaders at banks in Saudi Arabia finds the vast majority of those leaders see fraud attempts (85%) and fraud losses (83%) at their institution increasing every year. Half of those surveyed say their bank loses more than $10 million annually to fraud and scams, while nearly one-quarter (22%) of respondents report annual losses exceeding $25 million.

“Saudi Arabia’s regulatory framework is pushing banks toward more proactive, intelligence-led fraud controls, and that is starting to show up in how institutions are investing,” BioCatch country manager for Saudi Arabia, Syed Hussain said. “Insider fraud and synthetic identity fraud are now tied as the threats banking leaders in the Kingdom worry about most, and social engineering scams are increasingly reaching customers through dating and gaming apps rather than the phone calls and emails banks are used to monitoring. Closing that gap will take earlier detection and closer collaboration across the financial ecosystem.”

The survey was commissioned by BioCatch, which prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior. Despite an overwhelming majority of Saudi respondents reporting increasing fraud at their organization, nearly all (96%) of those surveyed in the country rate their existing fraud controls as effective, with 75% describing them as “very effective.” Contrastingly, more than half (53%) of Saudi banking leaders say their institution’s investigative process still relies on manual reviews, while 36% say fraud investigations at their organization often take longer than two days to complete — the slowest pace of any country BioCatch surveyed.

More hopefully, half of Saudi banking leaders say their bank is actively procuring or implementing new fraud-prevention solutions, the highest rate of any country surveyed and 27 percentage points above the global average.

Other key findings:

• Gambling and dating platforms a source of scams: Saudi banking leaders identified “other phone apps,” including dating and gaming platforms, as the primary source of social engineering scams in the country, ahead of social media, phone calls, messaging apps, and online marketplaces.
• Reimbursement varies: While 29% of those surveyed say their bank reimburses more than three-quarters of scam victims (the highest rate among all countries surveyed), 51% say their organization reimburses less than half of scam victims.
• Finances over reputation: Two-thirds (66%) ranked the financial impact of fraud and scams as greater than or equal to their concern over the reputational risk posed by fraud and scams.

Download the report to view the complete results.

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About BioCatch:

BioCatch prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting more than 3,000 anonymized data points — keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, AI agent usage, jailbroken devices, and more — as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch's AI and machine-learning models continuously assess both user intent and any signs of coercion or manipulation throughout every millisecond of every digital banking session, allowing banks to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate in real time. Insights drawn from across the entire network of BioCatch institutions further amplify the power and accuracy of that real-time risk-scoring. As of the end of H1 2026, more than 370 financial institutions deploy BioCatch solutions, analyzing 19 billion user sessions per month and protecting more than 760 million users on more than 1.8 billion devices around the world from fraud and financial crime.

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PR contact:

Mac King
BioCatch director of global marketing communications
Mac.King@BioCatch.com