Lean Technologies and Synapse launch AI-powered credit decisioning in MENA

Source: Thoburns

Lean Technologies, MENA’s leading financial infrastructure provider, has partnered with Synapse Analytics, the region’s AI-native risk decisioning platform, to launch an end-to-end credit decisioning and analytics platform for lenders across Saudi, the UAE and the wider GCC.

At the heart of the partnership is a new decisioning stack that fuses Lean’s Open Banking data infrastructure with Synapse’s AI-native credit decisioning platform, enabling banks, fintechs, and lenders to:

• Instantly access and enrich real-time financial data as alternative credit signals.
• Combine bureau data with cashflow-based insights to underwrite new segments.
• Deploy Auto-AI/ML models alongside existing credit policies.
• Build, test, and monitor risk strategies with transparency and speed.

Traditional lending in MENA has long been constrained by limited access to reliable data, reliance on manual processes, and slow decision cycles. By unlocking granular transaction-level visibility through Open Banking and powering it with AI-driven risk models, Lean and Synapse are enabling instant, personalised, and scalable credit decisioning for the first time.

Synapse Analytics already powers decisioning use cases across Egypt, LATAM, and MENA bureau integrations, while Lean provides the largest regulated Open Banking network in KSA and UAE. Together, the companies are bringing a new standard of credit infrastructure to the region.

“This partnership marks a defining step in the evolution of credit infrastructure in MENA,” said Hisham Al-Falih, chief executive officer of Lean Technologies.

“By combining the data backbone of Open Banking with Synapse’s AI-native decisioning environment, we are giving lenders the tools to responsibly expand access to credit, accelerate decisioning, and power financial innovation at scale.”

“For too long, lenders in our region have faced a frustrating choice: outdated legacy systems, fragmented databases, or foreign solutions not suited to our market realities,” said Ahmed Abaza, chief executive officer of Synapse Analytics.

“Our partnership with Lean fundamentally transforms this landscape. By combining Synapse’s AI-powered decisioning with Lean’s unrivalled data access, we’re building a new, generational financial infrastructure that surpasses global standards and is specifically engineered for local lenders.”

The collaboration comes at a critical moment as regulators in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and across MENA advance Open Banking and Open Finance frameworks. With consumer permission, Lean and Synapse’s joint platform allows lenders to responsibly leverage alternative data sources while remaining compliant with local regulations.

By integrating Lean’s data acquisition layer with Synapse’s decisioning engine, the partnership provides the region’s lenders with a single, AI-ready environment that reduces underwriting friction, expands addressable segments, and supports regional goals of financial inclusion and economic diversification.

Further reading:Lean Technologies gains regulatory approval under UAE’s Open Finance framework