The Gulf’s financial sector is at a crossroads where massive market potential is being throttled by aging infrastructure. A comprehensive study released today, January 20, 2026, by Stitch, a Saudi-based unified financial infrastructure platform, reveals that 50% of Gulf financial institutions have missed significant business opportunities due to their reliance on legacy systems. The report, conducted in partnership with YouGov, surveyed senior decision-makers across Saudi Arabia and the UAE, uncovering a "paradox of progress": while 87% of banks have adopted external vendors, they have layered these modern tools on top of rigid, decades-old architectures rather than replacing them. This "Frankenstein" approach has created fragmented environments that slow down product launches and drain innovation budgets. The stakes for modernization are immense. The GCC digital banking market is projected to skyrocket from $12.7 billion in 2025 to $47.6 billion by 2032, yet current infrastructure ga...