Argaam Weekend |The Missing Link

The Missing Link

6^thJune 2026

● Inside the lending shift that is quietly reshaping Saudi banking's risk profile
● The AI ROI Gap: What Saudi Arabia's SME Sector Needs to Close It
● Q1 2026 and the Middle Layer: A Structural Audit of Saudi Auto Finance

Topics of the Week

Inside the lending shift that is quietly reshaping Saudi banking's risk profile

Saudi banks closed the year 2025 with the strongest aggregate results in the kingdom's banking history. Combined net profits for the top listed banks reached SAR 92.52 billion - a gain of 16.17% y/y over 2024's SAR 79.64 billion, which was itself a record at the time.

The AI ROI Gap: What Saudi Arabia's SME Sector Needs to Close It

Saudi Arabia's AI infrastructure programme represents one of the most deliberate and consequential sovereign technology investments of the current decade. The strategic logic is sound: build the capacity first, then grow the economy into it. But the relationship between infrastructure deployment and economic absorption is rarely linear.

Q1 2026 and the Middle Layer: A Structural Audit of Saudi Auto Finance

Saudi Arabia's new car market contracted -24.1% y/y in Q1 2026, with 167,553 units sold. In March alone, it fell -34.7% - a sharp decline that’s comparable in scale to the steepest monthly drops witnessed during COVID 19 in 2020. This followed full-year 2025 sales of 857,247 units — a record high. The reversal in Q1 2026 was abrupt and not gradual.