ورقة عمل
FinTech Adoption and Bank Performance in the Gulf Cooperation Council: Panel Evidence from 73 Listed Commercial and Islamic Banks (2020–2025)
Ahmad Alomari, Fawwaz Alrwabdah
الملخص
The paper presents the largest empirical evaluation of the adoption of FinTech and its impact on bank performance in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Over the 2020–2025 period, we form a balanced sample of 73 Saudi Arabian, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman listed commercial and Islamic banks, which give us 438 bank-year observations. Bank-level financial indicators (ROA, ROE, NIM, Cost-to-Income, NPL, LLP and Capital Adequacy) are based on audited annual reports and Pillar III disclosures; observational gaps are bridged through linear interpolation based on country-year sector medians in the KPMG GCC Listed Banks Results Reports. The FinTech indicators at country level are based on the World Bank Global Findex, the ITU DataHub, MAGNiTT venture-capital databases and central-bank regulatory-sandbox registers. An overall FinTech Adoption Index is built and experimented with its constituent parts. The effects of FinTech on bank profitability, efficiency, risk and capitalisation are estimated using two-way fixed-effects panel regressions with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors, and system-GMM robustness tests. We theorise that FinTech adoption increases profitability and efficiency but narrows net-interest margins, with non-uniform impacts across Islamic and conventional banks and across regulatory regimes. Findings present evidence-based policy advice to policymakers who realise Vision 2030/2035 digital-finance aspirations. This article adds to the work of Kayed et al. (2026), who implemented a qualitative scenario-based MCDA framework to Kuwait, with a quantitative cross-country complement based on observable bank-level performance.
التوثيق
Alomari, A., & Alrwabdah, F. (2026). FinTech Adoption and Bank Performance in the Gulf Cooperation Council: Panel Evidence from 73 Listed Commercial and Islamic Banks (2020–2025).. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202606.1615.v1