Dubai Finance unveils world-first AI compliance platform ‘ASCEND’ at Dubai AI Week

Dubai Finance (DOF) has launched ASCEND (AI-Assisted System for Compliance Verification and Recommendations), the world’s first AI-powered compliance verification platform for public finance, during the inaugural edition of Dubai AI Week.

The announcement was made by Abdulrahman Saleh Al Saleh, Director General of Dubai Finance, who stated that ASCEND is a cornerstone of DOF’s AI strategy, designed to enhance operational efficiency and elevate financial governance standards.

“By embedding AI into our governance model, we are not only reinforcing accountability and agility but also strengthening Dubai’s global leadership in digital government,” Al Saleh said.

Huda Hamdan Al Shaikh, Executive Director of the Corporate Services Sector and CEO of AI at Dubai Finance, explained that ASCEND addresses challenges in compliance verification, such as fragmented data and manual assessments. “This platform introduces AI-led governance that replaces labour-intensive reviews with autonomous, real-time assessments,” she said.

The system uses open-source large language models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to interpret legal texts, analyse financial procedures, and verify compliance. It performs gap analysis, detects risks, maps KPIs against legal frameworks, and generates bilingual, structured compliance reports.

Fatma Buti Alsuwaidi, Director of the Strategy and Corporate Performance Division, highlighted the platform’s ability to issue actionable recommendations and ensure the alignment of KPIs with regulatory standards.

ASCEND is hosted on UAE-based cloud infrastructure, ensuring compliance with national Information Security Regulation standards and data sovereignty requirements.

The platform's unveiling at Dubai AI Week underscored Dubai’s leadership in public sector AI innovation and set a new global benchmark for AI-driven financial governance.