As the Chief Digital Officer for RiyadBank, Mr. Pharaon oversees and manages the digital banking, data, AI, innovations and digital partnerships activities for the bank through the different programs and initiatives pertaining to those activities across the bank.

Mr. Pharaon is a technology innovation & digital advocate with around 20 years of experience gained through his previous engagements and strategic roles in major banks and other financial institutions and firms throughout the Middle East in general and Saudi Arabia.

He served as a partner in Deloitte ME, establishing and leading Deloitte Digital Center and leading the innovation team. Thus, he overlooked and served several critical and high-profile projects in Saudi and the ME across the different public and private sectors in collaboration with world-class expertise from different global centers. He also served as the Chief Technology Officer at Samba Financial Group, managing the technology organization for the group, serving Samba’s business in Saudi and across the world, and launched several developments and transformation programs for Samba.

Eng. Pharaon was one of the first few founding team members to build and launch Alinma bank. He worked across the many activities of establishing and launching a new bank and then progressing the rapid expansion and launching the subsidiary companies. He had managed the design, development, and roll-out of all networks, branches, Data Centers, and IT infrastructure and information security for the bank. Before that, he led and supported multiple critical and national programs for the banking and payments industry through his work at SAMA the Central Bank.

Mr.Pharaon holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from King Saud University and has completed several development programs, the latest of which was the Disruptive Innovation Program of Harvard Business School