Powering Financial Inclusion and Independence for Saudi Retail Customers Through AI

Saudi Arabia is witnessing great expansion on the financial landscape. This has created new opportunities for retail customers to invest, utilize, or participate but led to harder decision making and impacting financial inclusion and dependence. So, this paper explores how AI can empower retail customers by experimentation to achieve financial goals through personalized investment planning and monthly portfolio management. It simulates a low-risk investment strategy using a single continuous conversation with an AI tool, targeting car loan principal repayment and generating passive income to cover loan profit. The AI tool had successfully constructed a diversified portfolio and provided actionable monthly guidance, though it struggled with tracking allocations and generating accurate performance reports without manual intervention. A long with this, a public survey revealed that 54.3% to 63.8% of respondents held positive views of AI, and 27.6% had used AI for financial advice. Findings from both experiment and survey highlight both the potential and limitations of AI in fostering financial inclusion and independence.