Over the last five years, Mashreq has been very focused on investing in and supporting an area of banking which its group CEO considers “existential”.
Customer experience, whether for a retail customer or an institutional client, is foundational to the success of the bank, essentially driving growth, engagement, and demand among its customer base for banking products and services.
“Over the last few years we have been laser-focused on driving all aspects of customer experience at every touch point with our clients,” says Ahmed Abdelaal, who has been group CEO of the Dubai-based bank since 2019. “The whole idea is to build a holistic ecosystem that delivers a seamless customer experience around convenience, ease of access, and ease of transacting, together with a deep personalization in the services, products and solutions we are delivering.”
Such a focus has helped deliver growth across Mashreq’s banking businesses and markets it operates in. Looking forward, customer experience will continue to be a key growth driver, as well as the rollout of the bank’s digital capabilities and platforms in retail banking, wealth management, and corporate banking – especially in trade finance, cash management and payments – across international markets, and the continued expansion of its sustainable finance business.
“ESG is a core focus for us organizationally,” says Abdelaal. “And we are not doing this just to tick the box. We strongly believe that this is part of our social obligation to the economies that we are in, to the markets we are in, and to the communities that we are in.”
As the bank continues to grow and develop, one key characteristic of its success, according to Abdelaal, is its operational resilience.
“We need to have the agility to be able to withstand market shocks, and most importantly, to dynamically evolve with ever-growing market needs. This is not only from a client expectation point of view, but also a regulatory requirement, and reputational, point of view.”
Abdelaal adds: “We have invested heavily in our digital infrastructure over the past few years, generating significant capacity that can entertain our expansion plans and also tackle any unforeseen incident.”