Al Rajhi Bank1957 — 2026
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Four brothers began changing money for pilgrims in the 1930s. Seventy years later the institution they built holds SAR 974 billion — about $260 billion — making it the largest Islamic bank on earth, ahead of Kuwait Finance House by more than double. In 2027 it turns seventy since the exchange business and forty since the royal decree that made it a bank. Almost none of how it was actually done has been written down.
Exchange business 1957, Riyadh Established as a bank Royal Decree M/59, 29 June 1987 Headquarters Riyadh Anniversaries 70th and 40th, both 2027
Al Rajhi did not begin as a bank, and for most of its life it was not one. It began as a boy at a market stall in Riyadh in the late 1930s, changing currency for pilgrims and for the migrant workers who needed to send wages home. That trade — unglamorous, high-volume, built entirely on trust and on knowing who was good for the money — is where the institution's real foundations were laid, and it is the part of the story that has never been recorded properly.
Saleh bin Abdulaziz Al Rajhi started it. His brothers Sulaiman, Abdullah and Mohammed joined through the 1940s, and by 1947 there was a formal exchange shop. The year the bank itself treats as its founding is 1957. In 1978 the family's separate operations were consolidated into one company. Only on 29 June 1987, by Royal Decree No. M/59, did it become a Saudi joint-stock bank; it listed on the Saudi exchange on 1 December 1988 and took the shorter name Al Rajhi Bank in 2006.
What makes it unusual is not the size, though the size is remarkable. It is that a family business built on a manual, relationship-based trade converted itself into a fully Sharia-compliant bank at national scale, then into one of the most heavily digital banks in the world — 14.8 million active digital users and roughly a billion transactions a month — without ever adopting the interest-based model that every comparable institution was built on. Nobody has explained in public how that conversion was managed.
There is also a story here that has nothing to do with banking. In 2009–2011 Sulaiman Al Rajhi divided his personal fortune in two: half to his family, half into a permanent charitable endowment, formalised by a deed issued in mid-May 2011. Forbes had estimated him at between $5.9 and $7.7 billion. The endowment funds a university, a hospital and several mosques in Qassim. He is alive, at ninety-seven.
What follows is the seventy years as they can be documented from public sources — and it says plainly where the record stops, which is earlier and more often than an institution of this size should allow.
Era I
1930s — 1977
A market stall in Riyadh becomes a network of exchange houses serving pilgrims and migrant remittances.
c.1937Riyadh
In his mid-to-late teens, at a basta near the Grand Mosque area of Souq al-Dira. One biography dates this to 1937, another to about 1939. This is the beginning of everything that followed, and it is documented in two sentences.
1945–47Riyadh
Sulaiman joins Saleh in the exchange trade; a currency shop opens in Riyadh with Mohammed and Sulaiman. What the business actually did day to day, and how it built the trust that later made it a bank, is nowhere on the record.
1957Saudi Arabia
Al Rajhi’s own investor pages, Wikipedia, Saudipedia and family-business histories all treat 1957 as the founding year. One source gives 1956. This is a business start, not a licensed bank — a distinction the anniversary arithmetic depends on.
1970sRiyadh · Jeddah · Mecca
By the 1970s the family operated one of the largest money-changing networks in the Kingdom, handling pilgrim currency and worker remittances. No figures for this period have ever been published.
Era II
1978 — 1988
Separate family operations become one company, then a joint-stock bank by royal decree, then a listed one.
1978·01·23Riyadh
Individual exchange businesses merged into a single entity, described in sources as Al Rajhi Trading and Exchange Company. The reasoning behind the timing, and who drove it, is not documented.
1987·06·23
Issued 26 Shawwal 1407H, providing the regulatory framework about a week ahead of the decree itself.
1987·06·29Riyadh
Dated 3 Dhu al-Qa’dah 1407H, converting the entity into a Saudi joint-stock company. This is the bank’s own cited legal foundation, and the date the fortieth anniversary in 2027 is measured from.
1988·12·01Riyadh
Trading symbol 1120. Ministerial Resolution No. 1398 confirmed joint-stock status around this time.
Era III
1989 — 2005
Growth into a national retail and corporate bank, entirely without interest, at a scale nobody had attempted.
1989Saudi Arabia
Sources place the naming variously at 1987, 1988 or 1989, most likely conflating the decree, the listing and a subsequent formal renaming. The decree date is the solid anchor.
1990sSaudi Arabia
The bank built a retail network across the Kingdom on a model with no working precedent at that size. How the products were structured and approved, and what had to be argued to get them accepted, is not in any public source.
2004Riyadh
The Capital Market Authority later fined the bank SAR 40,000 for failing to update an electronic disclosure form — an administrative lapse, recorded here only so the account is complete.
Era IV
2006 — 2014
The name shortens, the bank leaves Saudi Arabia for the first time, and a decade of American litigation runs to its end.
2006Riyadh
The trade name shortens to Al Rajhi Bank. Twenty years on, 2026 is the twentieth anniversary of both the current name and the first international move.
2006·10·16Kuala Lumpur
The first branch opens on Jalan Ampang as Al Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation (Malaysia) Berhad. Kuwait and Jordan follow; neither opening date could be verified from any public source.
2011·02·12Riyadh
The brother who started the original stall. Sources disagree on whether he was born in 1920 or 1921. In later life he built the Al Batin palm project, which held a Guinness world record.
2011·05Riyadh
Waqf deed No. 32133934, issued 15/6/1432H. He had divided his wealth in two — half distributed to family, half into a permanent endowment funding a university, a hospital and mosques in Qassim. Forbes had estimated the total at $5.9–7.7 billion. He is often said to have declared bankruptcy; he did not.
2014·06·30Washington
The Supreme Court denies certiorari in O’Neill v. Al Rajhi Bank, leaving in place the January 2005 dismissal of all claims and closing the 9/11-related civil litigation with prejudice. A dismissal, not a finding either way.
Era V
2015 — 2022
Outside leadership, then a Saudi successor, and a rebuild of the bank around technology.
2015·05·18Riyadh
Recruited from Standard Chartered, succeeding Sulaiman Al-Zabin. The first phase of the digital rebuild runs under him.
2019·05·20Riyadh
Over debt-to-income rules in consumer lending. Individual amounts were not disclosed.
2020Riyadh
Previously deputy chief executive and chief operating officer, with a doctorate in auditing from Cardiff. He takes over at the start of the year and still holds the role.
2020·11·25Riyadh
Sulaiman’s son, chairman since 2008 and previously managing director. Reappointed again in November 2023.
Era VI
2023 — 2026
The largest Islamic bank in the world, by a wide margin, and an anniversary year that counts twice.
2024Riyadh
Up 19 per cent on the year, on assets of SAR 974 billion. Return on equity 21.1 per cent. Market capitalisation SAR 378 billion at year end.
2025Global
$259.5 billion in assets against Kuwait Finance House at $119.1 billion and Dubai Islamic Bank at $93.8 billion. First on Forbes Middle East’s thirty most valuable banks.
2027Riyadh
Seventy since the exchange business of 1957, and forty since the royal decree of 1987. As of September 2026 no anniversary programme has been announced.
A bank this size ought to have an account of how it was built. Almost none of it exists.
the exchange years · the conversion · Kuwait and Jordan · the chairmen before 2008
The difficult chapters
Two of these are matters of public allegation and legal record, and are set out here precisely rather than omitted. The rest are gaps.
After 11 September 2001 the bank was named in US civil suits alleging it had processed transactions for charities said to have terrorist links. In January 2005 a New York court dismissed all claims, finding the plaintiffs had not shown the bank knew. The Supreme Court denied certiorari on 30 June 2014, making the dismissal final. No court and no regulator has ever found the bank liable. The bank has consistently denied the allegations. That is the whole of the legal record, and it should be stated in those terms — alleged, dismissed, denied.
Sulaiman Al Rajhi is widely described as having declared bankruptcy after giving away his fortune. No court filing, regulator record or first-tier report supports this. What happened was a deliberate division of wealth into family shares and a permanent endowment. The popular retelling has drifted from the documented facts, and the drift is worth correcting.
Arabic aggregator sites have repeatedly announced Sulaiman Al Rajhi’s death across at least two waves. They are false. Gulf Business profiled him in the present tense on 11 May 2026, at ninety-seven, and no first-tier outlet has reported otherwise.
Twenty years of trade — the volumes, the corridors, the pilgrim season, how credit was extended and recovered without contracts — exists in no published account. It is the foundation of the whole institution and it is missing entirely.
How a manual, relationship-based exchange business became a licensed joint-stock bank between 1978 and 1988: what had to be built, who was hired, what the regulator required, what nearly failed. Not documented anywhere.
Search for Al Rajhi alumni and what comes back is LinkedIn, ZoomInfo, Datanyze, LeadIQ and Revelio Labs — scraped employee directories sold to recruiters. The bank’s own “Blue Generation” programme is for graduates joining, not for anyone who has left.
The people who built it
Four brothers, two chief executives of the modern era, and a chairman. For a bank with more than twenty-three thousand employees and seventy years of history, that is the entire public roster. Nobody who ran a region, built the branch network, structured the products or managed the conversion appears anywhere.
Do not confuse Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rajhi, one of the four founding brothers, with Abdullah bin Sulaiman Al Rajhi, the current chairman and Sulaiman’s son. They are a generation apart and Arabic search results mix them constantly. Who chaired the bank before 2008 is not established anywhere public.
Seventy years, in figures
About $260 billion in assets at 31 December 2024, against Kuwait Finance House at $119.1 billion. Net profit up 19 per cent; return on equity 21.1 per cent; market capitalisation SAR 378 billion; 4,371 ATMs; 14.8 million active digital users and roughly a billion transactions a month. Women were 33.6 per cent of the workforce and 54.2 per cent of new hires in 2024. A total customer count has never been published.
What is not recorded
These are not marginal. Each one sits at the centre of how the institution became what it is, and the answer to each exists in somebody’s memory and nowhere else.
Twenty years of it, and no account of how it worked, what it handled, or how the trust it ran on was built and enforced.
1978 to 1988: from family exchange houses to a licensed, listed joint-stock bank. Who did it, what the regulator demanded, what nearly went wrong.
How a full retail and corporate bank was structured without interest, at national scale, when no working model existed at that size. What was argued, and with whom.
Both operations exist. Neither opening date could be established from any public source, in either language.
Twenty-one years between the royal decree and Abdullah bin Sulaiman’s appointment. Nobody is named for any of it.
Firm birth and death dates for Abdullah and Mohammed could not be established beyond headline confirmation that both have died.
None of this is obscure. That is what the founding directory is for.
Why this anniversary is different
Seventy years since the exchange business the bank counts from, and forty since the royal decree that made it a bank. Two anniversaries, one year, and as of September 2026 no programme, no book, no film. The bank tells its founding story from 1957 on its own investor pages and treats 1987 as the legal milestone, so both dates are its own.
The people who matter are reachable, and some of them are very old. Sulaiman Al Rajhi is ninety-seven. Anyone who worked in the exchange houses before 1978 is in their eighties at least. The generation that managed the conversion into a bank through the 1980s is now retiring, and nobody has asked them anything.
Al Rajhi Bank has no alumni network. Neither does any other Saudi institution we have checked, in English or Arabic. For the largest Islamic bank in the world, on the eve of a double anniversary, the record of how it was built is close to empty.
Across the exchange years, the conversion, the branch build-out, the product committees, the technology rebuild and the international units — in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Kuala Lumpur, Amman and Kuwait.
One structured hour each. Not nostalgia — method. How a product was approved, how a branch network was built, what the conversion actually required, and what they would do differently.
Tagged to a person, a period, a function and a milestone, so the next institution attempting a Sharia-compliant bank at scale can find the answer rather than reinvent it.
Compiled from Al Rajhi Bank’s own 2024 corporate-information filing and investor pages, Saudipedia in Arabic and English, the Sulaiman Al Rajhi endowment’s own site, Argaam, Al Eqtisadiah, Gulf Business, Forbes Middle East, TAB Insights’ ranking of the world’s largest Islamic banks, MIFC on the Malaysian launch, SCOTUSblog and contemporaneous reporting on the US litigation, and Bloomberg and Gulf Business on the 2019 SAMA penalties. Where sources disagree — the founding year, the corporate renaming, Sulaiman Al Rajhi’s birth year — this account gives what is documented and says where the record runs out.
The exchange business dates from 1957; the bank was established by Royal Decree M/59 on 29 June 1987. They are not the same event and should not be merged. This is an independent alumni project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a property of Al Rajhi Bank.