Adil Belhouari is well known distinguished leader in the Banking and financial industry looking after areas of Artificial Intelligence, Data Science & Business Intelligence. He’s working currently in the capacity of Riyad Bank’s Senior Vice President and Head of AI, Data Science, and Analytics, who oversees the Bank’s Center of Intelligence, the region’s first banking advanced analytics hub.  He has also been honored as the “Most Influential AI and Data Science Expert of the Year 2025” by CToday Awards. With his good academic foundation in mathematics, statistics, and computer science, Adil started his career working for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), performing socio-economic studies for North Africa and Southern Europe and he contributed after to the development and transformation of several world-class Multinational companies.

A Leadership Style Rooted in Collaboration

Adil’s leadership philosophy and style involves passion, motivation, and teamwork. He cultivates a culture of mutual knowledge-sharing, innovative thinking, and processual teamwork. Instead of promoting internal competition and individual achievements, he induces collective decision-making, collaborative work and transparent communication. His teams are always encouraged to innovate openly and develop collectively, and hence, an atmosphere is created where ideas bloom. This style of leadership empowers individuals and enhances the collective effect within the organization, showing that success arises out of collaboration, faith, and common vision.

Global Recognition and Universal Industry Awards 

Adil’s visionary mindset to lead the future and impactful contributions to the field have been recognized universally in the financial and AI sectors. He was awarded “Best Leader in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science” in 2022 at the Banking AI and Analytics Summit. He was also awarded and appreciated by the Financial Academia of the Saudi Central Bank in 2022 for his efforts in shaping the financial intelligence of the Kingdom’s 2030 vision. More recognitions and contribution acknowledgements were confirmed when he was awarded the “Best Use Case Implementation for Hyper-Personalization and Customer Analytics” in 2024 and also honored as “Personality of the Year” at the Middle East Banking World Summit in 2024.

Banking’s Future: Predictive, Personalized, and Embedded

Forward, Adil sees the industry future where banking is even more personal to customers. Hyper-personalization, predictive analytics, and automated decisions will fuel frictionless, real-time banking. Banks will embed AI tools and solutions to deepen customer relationships, improve the customer experience, enhance business efficiency, and provide high quality services ahead of customers’ awareness and expectation. In Adil’s view, banks that adopt these trends will not only stay competitive but also become pioneers and leaders in building intelligent, adaptive, and resilient systems and offering.

Advice To Future Innovators

To future professionals, Adil has this to say: not only become masters in technical areas such as mathematics, statistics, computer science, and analytics programming, but also learn strategic thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills. It is crucial, he says, that success in this field is achieved through the balance of analytical know-how and human understanding and soft skills. With passion, purpose, and flexibility, the next generation can indeed make significant change and define the future of financial services.