Welcome Address: His Excellency Abdulaziz Al Ghurair
Chairman of UAE Banks Federation
14th November 2016, at 9:10am, in theSt. Regis Abu Dhabi, Corniche
As-Salaam-o-Alaykum
Your Excellency Mubarak Rashid Khamis Al Mansoori, Governor of the UAE Central Bank,
Your Excellences, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome you all to this year’s Middle East Banking Forum.
Our theme for this conference “Transforming the Customer Experience” is very pertenant in the context of rapidly changing environment that banks are currently facing across the Globe.
On one hand banks are trying to protect their business which is constantly under threat from fast growing Fintechs and other Online unregulated competitors. On the other hand regulatory environment is getting tougher. Basel III has been implemented which has significantly increased capital and liquidity requirements. IFRS 9, AML regulations FATCA etc. are all increasing cost of banking operation.
Banks have to follow not only home regulations but also international regulations as their transactions cut across national boundaries.
The fast evolving technology particularly usage of artificial intelligence and robotic technology in business is revolutionising customers interaction at various touch points. Customers are comparing their product/ service fulfilment experience with different providers across the industries. This is putting enormous pressure on banks to benchmark their service quality and customer experiences with other industries.
In the middle of this,Financial industry hasto prepare itself for serious disruption as evolving technologies will enable the new age innovators to come up with ideas which will shake up the whole industry. We have seen likes of Uber, Airbnb and Amazon to shake up their respective industries. The future disruption in banking would be on the back of superior customer experience at lower cost.
Traditionally banks have been using different channels for customer interactionslike branches, telephone banking, online banking, direct sales etc. Each channel had its own unique proposition and service standards. Going forward banks will have to go Omni channel route where customers chose the channel according to his / her convenience but quality of interaction and ease of operations must remain the same. In case customer choses multiple channels his experience across all channels has to be same and Seam less. Delivering this seam less Omnichannel sales and service fulfilment will transform the customer experience.
Customer Experience is not only efficiency and quality of product /service fulfilment but is also being transparent and ethical in all our dealings with our customers and safe guarding their interest. Banking industry has been rattled with issues like mis-selling or manipulations of information for undue gain. Many global banks have been fined for unethical behavior or for not being transparent with customers. We as industry must tackle this issue very seriously and educate our staffs, train them extensively and ensure that only right behaviour is rewarded. UAE bank federation has taken up the issue and we are working at different fronts to ensure transparency and ethical selling as the core of every value proposition.
As we seek to implement more and more technology-based solutions to increase our reach, and to help us make our own operations more efficient, we face the increasing and ever more pervasive challenge of cyber-crime which we must overcome if we are to keep the trust of our customers and their need for security and privacy.
Your excellences, ladies and gentlemen.
Perhaps more in our profession than in most others we are also seeing a change in the perception of what we are. Research that shows that the millennial group of customers that we compete for are these days more trusting of apps than they are of financial advisers. This trust is clearly not based on substance, so much as on availability and ease of access.
This is the new era in which we live. It is not the future - it is now. Just as social media has put journalism in the hands of the general public, the application of technology now reflects how customers live their lives, and how their relationship with their banks fits into them. It’s that way round, not the reverse. The absolute rules that once existed for what people wanted and how banks delivered it have been rewritten. We must respond.
The UAE Banks Federation is very much alive to these trends, and through its 17 special Committees helps member banks to rise to the challenge. We have also focused on specific issues arising during the year, not least in the area of small and medium sized enterprises where our “modus operandi” has enabled over 1,700 companies, in the first 8 months, to stabilize their funding requirements with their banks and remain in operation. We look forward to another year of co-operation, progress and success.
Thank you again, I appreciate your attendance and wish you an enjoyable and fruitful day ahead.
