IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced that Mashreq, a financial institution in the Middle East and North Africa, is piloting IBM Bob to advance its integration engineering capabilities. IBM Bob is IBM’s enterprise AI-powered software engineering platform.

Through the pilot, Mashreq is exploring how agentic AI can accelerate software delivery. It also aims to improve developer productivity and lay the foundation for AI-driven software engineering.

Mashreq has built a modern integration platform that serves as the backbone of its digital banking ecosystem. The platform enables connectivity across channels, applications, partners and countries. It supports digital banking, instant payments, cross-border transactions, API-driven ecosystems and multi-country operations. On average, it processes 650 transactions per second across digital channels, payments and enterprise systems.

To sustain this growth and accelerate innovation, the bank is testing how agentic AI can assist integration teams across the software development lifecycle. This covers solution design and planning, development, code review and production troubleshooting.

Activities that once required two to three hours of manual effort were completed within minutes. As a result, engineers can deliver solutions faster, resolve issues more efficiently and focus on higher-value innovation. Early results show up to a 60 to 70 percent reduction in time spent on integration design and troubleshooting. Developer productivity also improved through AI-assisted decision-making.

“As we continue to advance our digital-first strategy, we are investing in technologies that help our engineering teams move faster while maintaining the resilience and quality our customers expect,” said Mohamed Abdel Razek, Group Head of Technology, Transformation and Information, Mashreq.

He added, “Through our pilot with IBM Bob, we’re seeing how agentic AI can help simplify complex integration engineering, accelerate delivery and improve developer productivity. As we continue our AI journey, we’re also evaluating how these capabilities can transform software engineering and operations across the enterprise.”

Meanwhile, Mashreq is working with IBM and GBM to modernize the integration platform behind its digital banking ecosystem. The bank is using cloud-native integration technologies, including IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, IBM MQ, IBM App Connect, IBM API Connect, Red Hat OpenShift and Confluent. Together, these tools support a scalable, resilient and AI-ready foundation. They also enable secure connectivity, real-time data movement and enterprise-grade governance.

In addition, Mashreq is using IBM Context Forge, which is based on the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It enables agent-based orchestration across the integration lifecycle. The technology gives AI agents secure access to enterprise integration knowledge, API specifications, architecture standards and operational context.

Through a secure gateway, the bank manages about 4,000 requests per month from AI agents. These requests connect to digital banking, payments and enterprise systems. This helps Mashreq explore a collaborative AI environment for design decisions, code reviews, troubleshooting and operational analysis.

“Our vision is to create an intelligent engineering environment where AI agents can work alongside our teams to support design, code reviews and troubleshooting,” said Santosh Vaidya, Head of Payments and Digital Services, Mashreq. “IBM Context Forge provides the foundation to securely explore this using the enterprise knowledge our engineers rely on every day.”

Shukri Eid, VP & General Manager, IBM Gulf Levant and Pakistan, IBM, also commented on the pilot. “The next chapter of AI will require empowering developers and engineers with intelligent agents that can collaborate across complex software engineering workflows,” he said. “Mashreq is taking a strategic approach by combining a modern, cloud-native integration platform with agentic AI and IBM Bob to transform how software is designed, developed and maintained.”

He continued, “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.”

GBM also shared its view on the collaboration. “As UAE banks accelerate their digital transformation and adoption of AI, combining global technology expertise with deep local understanding is increasingly important,” said Muralidharan Rajagopalan, Interim General Manager, GBM Dubai. “At GBM, we bring that perspective to help organizations translate emerging technologies into practical outcomes. We’re proud to work with Mashreq and IBM to explore how agentic AI can help engineering teams move faster, simplify complex integration work and create more capacity for innovation.”

Overall, Mashreq is combining its high-performance integration platform with the IBM Bob pilot and IBM Context Forge. This lays the foundation for intelligent, agent-based operations that will support the future of digital banking. The bank is also exploring a future on-premises deployment of IBM Bob for mission-critical use cases. These cases may require locally hosted models to address data residency and regulatory requirements.

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