Mashreq pilots IBM AI agents in integration engineering

Mashreq has begun piloting IBM Bob, an AI tool built to help engineers design, build and maintain software. The UAE bank is applying it to work handled by its integration engineering teams.

IBM says early results show cuts of 60% to 70% in the effort that integration design and troubleshooting consume. Some jobs that once took two to three hours now finish in minutes. The figures are the vendor's, drawn from the pilot's first phase.

The bank's aim is to learn where agents can add value across a project's life. The pilot covers:

• planning and design;
• code reviews;
• the repair of faults in systems that are already running.

Work centres on the integration layer

Much of the work sits on the bank's integration platform, the layer that links three of its service lines: digital banking, instant payments and cross-border transfers. The platform averages 650 transactions per second, a figure that describes its overall load rather than the pilot's own traffic.

IBM and GBM are working with the bank on an upgrade of that platform.

To keep the agents coordinated, Mashreq uses IBM Context Forge, a tool built on the Model Context Protocol, a standard for connecting AI models to external tools and data. Context Forge gives the agents gated access to API specifications, design standards and operational data, so their work draws on the bank's own rules rather than assumptions about them.

Each month, roughly 4,000 requests from the agents pass through a secure gateway. From there they reach the bank's payments, banking and business systems.

Permissions matter as much as model quality inside a regulated bank. Agents that touch payments and banking systems need access that can be traced and limited, which is what the gateway provides.

What the executives say

"As we continue our AI journey, we're also evaluating how these capabilities can transform software engineering and operations across the enterprise," said Mohamed Abdel Razek, Group Head of Technology, Transformation and Information at Mashreq.

"Together, we're helping build an intelligent digital foundation that accelerates innovation, improves operational efficiency and prepares the bank for the future of AI-driven banking," said Shukri Eid, vice president and general manager for IBM Gulf Levant and Pakistan.

The bank describes the exercise as a stage in a wider AI programme rather than a finished deployment, and is looking at whether the same capabilities apply to software engineering and operations elsewhere in the business.

Locally hosted models under review

Mashreq is also weighing whether to run IBM Bob on its own servers for systems it treats as critical. That route could call for AI models hosted inside the country, keeping data local and meeting regulatory requirements.