Far from being dissuaded from our central, strategic goal during the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have crystallised our strategy to transform Al Hilal Bank into the nation’s first fully retail digital Islamic bank, whilst continuing to offer our customers exceptional, uninterrupted banking services.

To safeguard our people and processes in response to the spread of the virus, we immediately created a dedicated team to ensure business continuity and engagement with employees during the crisis. Our primary objectives at the onset of the pandemic were clear: to ensure both the health and well-being of our staff, and the uninterrupted delivery of services to our customers.

We quickly moved to increase cash withdrawal limits via our ATMs to support customer needs and reduce branch visits, and aside from the closure of our mall outlets until July, all branches remained operational on a single-shift service basis. Despite the extraordinary circumstances, we achieved a 60% net promoter score (NPS) for our branch services.

We worked to ensure business continuity across all emirates in our network; quick services were provided through our contact centre; and we launched a virtual ‘Seghaar’ kids account opening service to reduce the inflow of young people to our branches.

Those staff most at risk from the virus were given the option to work from home, whilst all pregnant employees were immediately transferred to remote working. The head office worked at 30% capacity and branches at 50% capacity, both on bi-weekly rotations in line with PCR checks for all staff to ensure their safety and the safety of others.

By quickly adapting to this unprecedented situation and its constraints, we were able to innovate to a greater degree than before the onset of the pandemic, driving forward with our digitisation strategy while also developing our digital marketing and customer engagement channels.

FUTURE-READY DIGITAL SERVICES

Having completed our integration with ADCB with exceptional speed and efficiency, we turned our attention to achieving synergies. Thanks to effective collaboration and teamwork our customers faced no disruptions during our induction into the ADCB family. Indeed, the integration committee placed customer needs and expectations at the heart of the process.

Capitalising on ADCB’s digital development and infrastructure, Al Hilal Bank revamped its website and launched a new onboarding app — Ahlan — which is based on the platform employed by ADCB’s award-winning Hayyak app.

The Al Hilal Bank of the future will build on this approach and take the form of a heavily customer-focused digital platform, featuring a broad marketplace of offerings and services, including a comprehensive suite of Shari’ah-compliant banking products. Through this evolved offering we aim to surpass traditional banking services to attract a new generation of retail customers for whom ethical and transparent banking is of increasing importance.

Our vision is of an institution that empowers customers to dictate the form and function of their banking platform, in a manner that moves beyond the familiar concept of internet and mobile banking. In short, we intend our forthcoming platform to represent an evolutionary leap in digital banking, delivered in a way that is highly intuitive, user friendly, ethical and free of hidden fees and charges, and offers proactive — rather than reactive — customer support whenever needed.

OUR EXTENSIVE DIGITAL CREDENTIALS

Our digital offering continues to expand and evolve in line with this strategic transformation. Indeed, the majority of the Bank’s transactions and processes are already digital. In 2020, 63% of all customer transactions were completed via mobile banking, compared to 24% of transactions through ATMs, 11% of transactions through our branches and contact centre, and 2% through IVR phone banking.

Digital transactions in Q4 2020 were 13% higher than the previous quarter, while digital wallet transactions were up 36% quarter on quarter. Our registered mobile and internet banking users have risen from 37,000 customers in Q4 of 2019 to 65,000 at year-end 2020. New customers onboarded digitally rose from 2,000 in Q1 2020 to 7,400 in Q4 2020.

We are already one of only a handful of banks who support a complete line-up of mobile pay options — including Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, FitBit Pay and Garmin Pay. In June we completed the sale of Al Hilal Takaful — our Islamic insurance subsidiary — driven by our focus on delivering high-quality, primarily digital retail banking services.

In recognition of this strategic direction toward digital banking, we received the ‘Best Digital Account Opening, Middle East’ award for our Ahlan onboarding app from The Digital Banker’s 2020 Global Retail Banking Innovation Awards, in which 23 banks participated. Today almost 81% of our new customers are onboarded via Ahlan, which allows customers to open a new account in minutes.

PEOPLE

As we transition to our digital platform, we continue to build our new teams and upskill our staff in preparation for executing our strategy for a fully digital future.

While the integration into ADCB has made us leaner and more efficient, this has allowed us to concentrate more keenly on promoting local talent. Today, 50% of our employees are UAE Nationals — the highest proportion in the UAE banking industry.

We are now focussed on developing the skill sets we require to realise this future, whilst also raising the skill levels available internally to meet the many other new demands of our transformation.

LOOKING AHEAD

We remain focussed on positioning ourselves for our new digital future, with customer experience as our top priority. We will continue to make greater use of data analytics and behavioural economics to help drive this digital strategy and ensure our technology meets the needs of our digital-savvy Islamic retail customers.

As long as COVID-19 remains a pressing concern around the world, we will continue to emphasise the ongoing good health and well-being of our staff and customers and ensure full compliance with the directives and measures of the UAE government and authorities.

Simultaneously, as we continue to grow our digital service throughout the coming year, we will seek to maintain our exceptional recent onboarding record, train more of our people and recruit more expertise to power the digital transition, and maintain our excellent service levels whilst we transform into a more agile future-ready bank.