Musata Matei, who works in Ventures, Partnerships and Engagement at First Abu Dhabi Bank’s (FAB) AI Innovation Hub and serves as Partnerships Lead for Women in AI UAE, joins FinTech TV’s Raghda Ibraheem to unpack what AI transformation actually looks like inside a major UAE bank, and why most AI pilots still do not reach production.

Her diagnosis: the gap between AI pilots and AI that runs a business is not a technology problem, it is an operating model problem. Capgemini research published in November 2025 found that 33% of financial institutions are developing proprietary AI agents, but only 10% have deployed them at scale. The harder work is connecting a working AI demo to a bank’s data systems, security, compliance and risk frameworks, and giving people a real reason to use it.

The conversation covers where banks should build, buy or partner for AI capability, how HSBC has moved more than 600 AI use cases into production across fraud detection, cybersecurity and transaction monitoring, why the threshold for human oversight should track the consequence of a decision rather than whether AI is involved, and what a customer interacting with an AI-run bank might not even notice a year from now.

Matei also discusses the AI talent pipeline for women in the region. The UAE now ranks second globally for net AI talent migration, behind only Luxembourg, according to Stanford’s 2026 AI Index. Her point: closing the gap is not about training more women in AI, it is about connecting them to the networks and rooms where opportunities are created.

Musata Matei is part of MENA Fintech Association’s network across 22 markets.

Guest: Musata Matei, Ventures, Partnerships and Engagement, FAB AI Innovation Hub; Partnerships Lead, Women in AI UAE
Interviewer: Raghda Ibraheem, FinTech TV