JPMorgan Chase has launched a Technology Excellence Center in Bahrain in partnership with government agency Tamkeen.

Doug Pitteno, JP Morgan Chase Co-Chairman and Commercial and Investment Bank CEO, described the initiative as a reflection of the region's shifting growth drivers toward innovation, digital capability and skills development, Akhbar Al-Khaleej reported.

Pitteno said that the centre will strengthen the bank's technological footprint in Bahrain and contribute to developing specialised talent across the broader economic ecosystem. JPMorgan has operated in Bahrain since 1972, expanding its offering over five decades across capital markets access, risk management, treasury and payments services, and advisory, growth the executive framed as running in parallel with Bahrain's emergence as a regional financial centre.

On regional opportunity, Pitteno identified digital and instant payments, treasury modernisation, capital markets development, and cross-border investment flows as the most active areas, alongside infrastructure, economic diversification and energy transformation, sectors where, he noted, financing needs have grown more sophisticated and risk management more central to deal execution.

The bank's approach to artificial intelligence reflects a similar duality. Pitteno said AI is reshaping workflows but not the fundamentals clients value: sound judgement, trust, execution quality and risk discipline. Talent development, he explained, is therefore moving along two parallel tracks: sustained demand for banking, markets and risk expertise, and rising requirement for engineering, data science and cybersecurity skills needed to build and operate AI-powered products.

JPMorgan's workforce planning organises this around three priorities: attracting senior technology and risk leaders, upskilling existing teams so AI functions as a productivity tool rather than a separate discipline, and building integrated product-technology-risk teams to develop and govern solutions responsibly.