Strategy

  1. UAE-Centric

    01

    Growth through a UAE-centric approach, with controlled internationalisation

  2. Sustainable Growth

    02

    Sustainability through liability growth

  3. Customer-Centric

    03

    Maintain a culture of service excellence and efficiency

  4. Risk-Aware

    04

    Manage our risk in line with a predefined risk strategy

  5. Talent-Driven

    05

    Success through staff

Our strategy is built upon a robust set of pillars that direct our decision making. This approach has helped us ‘ride the roller coaster’ of the economic cycle whilst ensuring greater resilience for the Bank moving forward.

The Board has reaffirmed our strategic direction of working to create the most valuable bank in the UAE, as a measure of total shareholder return, with a focus on profitable, sustainable growth and protecting our return on equity through a repeatable core business and operating model. We are risk-aware and prudent in our pursuit of growth and profitability.

This means we will continue with a granular build to our balance sheet, focusing on small and medium enterprises (SMEs), mid-corporates and consumers, whilst increasing emphasis on fee income generation across the Bank. Our risk appetite is always in alignment with our overall strategy to preserve the quality of our portfolio and our long-term prospects.

The enduring value we create for our shareholders, our people and the UAE economy will always continue to set us apart.

Aspirations

We aspire to strong profitability, consistent and attractive shareholder returns, low earnings volatility, sustained efficiency, and becoming the bank of choice for both consumers and corporates. These aspirations align with the key metrics listed in the table below.

Aspiration Metric
Most valuable Total shareholder return
Most profitable Return on equity
Most resilient Earnings per share
Most efficient Cost to income ratio
Best customer service Net Promoter Score

Our goal is to meet or exceed our own standards and establish new benchmarks for the industry, measured against the below metrics and other key performance indicators reported herein.

Objectives

To deliver on our ambitions and aspirations, management is focused on profitably growing assets and volumes in line with our segments of choice. We will continue to diversify our revenues with increased non-interest income opportunities. We look to further improve our agility and execution capabilities, whilst embedding true accountability into our DNA as a business. And as a customer-centric organisation, we will continue to find better ways to make it simpler for our customers to bank with us whilst delivering best-in-class service.

In order to deliver against these objectives, management has defined a portfolio of initiatives for each operating group. These range from efforts to maximise our market share in trade finance to creating a meaningful presence in remittances; from preserving our growing leadership with SMEs to capturing our fair market share in Islamic banking across consumers and corporate customers; and from creating innovation agendas for our wholesale and retail groups to driving maximum profitability out of our investment book.