George Harrak once told his own leadership team that half of them would be gone within a year, and he meant it as a compliment.

CEO of Jeel, the digital arm of Riyadh Bank, George joined host Mohammad Osama on Above C Level to talk about what it actually takes to build inside one of the world’s fastest moving financial markets, and about a childhood that shaped him long before he ever set foot in a bank.

He grew up in Melbourne, working behind the counter of his family’s cafés and petrol stations from the age of twelve, watching his parents wake at 4am and get home past eleven without complaint. That’s the backdrop he brings to Jeel today, where he’s built a sandbox platform that helps fintechs test and get certified with the regulator, all while the Kingdom chases its target of 525 fintech companies by 2030. George explains what’s actually driving that number, and why local Saudi founders, not just international players, are the ones filling his pipeline.

The career story is where the chat gets interesting. George describes himself as a talent magnet, someone who has pulled colleagues from Standard Chartered, DBS and ANZ into every organisation he’s built since. He’s candid about telling a leadership team outright that half of them would be poached within a year, and why he sees that as proof of a job done right rather than a failure to retain people, particularly in a market where getting long-term incentive structures right is often what decides who stays.

He’s equally direct about Gen Z, about AI’s real impact on financial services, and about why the region he now calls home, where tech salaries keep climbing alongside Vision 2030 ambitions, is no longer playing catch-up with hubs like Singapore or Dubai’s own DIFC, recently confirmed as one of the world’s top four FinTech hubs.

What stands out across the conversation isn’t the numbers, impressive as Jeel’s growth has been. It’s Harrak’s insistence that hard-earned experience, the kind that comes from getting things wrong early, still matters more than any dashboard or algorithm. For anyone building a career or a team in Gulf fintech right now, that’s a rare kind of honesty.

Watch The Conversation Here

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