Robo-advisor services in Saudi Arabia manage 9.9 billion SAR at end-Q2

Robo-advisor services in Saudi Arabia managed ﷼9.9 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2026. The figure is assets under management at licensed fintech companies and capital market institutions, according to data published by Argaam on 15 October 2026. That is a 128 percent rise from the same quarter a year earlier. Quarter on quarter the total rose by about ﷼2.08 billion, or 26.6 percent. The number of investment portfolios crossed one million for the first time, reaching 1.05 million. That is a 161 percent annual increase and an 80 percent rise from the previous quarter. Average assets per portfolio stood at about ﷼9,500. The growth is steep when measured from the start of the series. Assets under management are more than 34 times the level recorded in early 2023. From the first quarter of 2024 the published figures include all licensed providers, both fintech firms and capital market institutions. Before that the set was narrower. Readers comparing the early years with 2026 should keep the change in coverage in mind. A jump that looks continuous may partly reflect a wider count. A robo-advisor here is a licensed service that uses algorithms to manage a client’s investments according to a predefined strategy, with little or no human intervention. The Capital Market Authority has issued licenses for this activity to eight fintech companies between August 2021 and June 2025: Madkhol, Malaa, Al-WAA, Siolla, Thriftplan, Awqef, Thraia AI and Eddekhar. Capital market institutions also offer the service. Individuals make up about 98 percent of the clients. For a young professional in Riyadh the useful number is the average, not the total. ﷼9,500 per portfolio is a small account. One million portfolios at that size produce the ﷼9.9 billion. The growth in accounts has outrun the growth in assets per account. That pattern is common when a product is new and the first users open small balances to try it. It also means the next stage of growth depends on whether existing clients add money, not only on whether new ones open an account. Saudi Arabia has been licensing digital investment products as part of the wider opening of the capital market. Robo-advisory sits inside that. The 1.05 million portfolios are not the whole retail investor base. The total number of investors using fintech company services more broadly was about 1.19 million. The robo figure is a subset. A portfolio opened and left with a few thousand riyals counts the same as one that is actively funded. The data do not show returns, fees or the share of assets that sit in cash versus invested. They do not show which of the eight fintech firms holds the largest share. They do not show whether the 80 percent quarterly jump in portfolios came from one campaign or from steady additions. An average of ﷼9,500 can hide a long tail of tiny accounts and a smaller number of larger ones. Until the authority or the firms publish a distribution, the average is the only per-client figure available. A further limit is what the client can do with the account. A robo-advisor that only offers a handful of model portfolios is a different product from one that lets the user adjust risk or add a goal. The published data do not distinguish. They count assets and portfolios. They do not count features. A firm that has grown by making the first account free, or by paying a referral, will show the same rise in the aggregate as a firm that has grown by word of mouth. The total does not separate them. If the next quarter shows assets per portfolio rising while the account count keeps growing, the product is deepening. If the account count rises and the average falls, the growth is still mostly new small accounts. The figure missing for that reading is the distribution of portfolio sizes. A Riyadh user adding a monthly transfer will show in the average long before it shows in a new license. The ﷼9.9 billion is the stock. The flow that built it is not published. That is the gap. Without it, the one million portfolios remain a headcount, not a full measure of client commitment.