Boubyan Bank won Best Innovation Program for a new SME banking app, digital on-boarding, and its Msa3ed chatbot, while the Best Payment Innovation trophy at the virtual MENA Banking Excellence Awards 2022 was achieved for its PayMe ecosystem. The Kuwaiti Islamic bank also won Best CSR Initiative for its many community-minded projects, including using Msa3ed to encourage Covid-19 vaccination, and its vice chairman and group Chief Executive Officer, Adel Al-Majed, was named MENA Islamic Banker of the Year.
Boubyan has a history of disrupting the retail payment landscape after introducing Kuwait’s first 24×7 digital peerto- peer (P2P) payment option last decade using web-links for individuals and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It has now expanded this dominant PayMe method into an ecosystem, so since last year users can now pay each other Boubyan to Boubyan customer via a simple Face ID, without the need to go through the payment gateway. There are also:
PayMe Groups: this gives users the ability to request money from a group of people simultaneously. You can save groups as well to ensure fast requests in the future.
PayMe on Apple Watch: this feature on the bank’s Apple Watch app can display a QR code for a payment, so anyone can scan and pay while on the move.
PayMe Split the Bill: splitting bills easily with friends and family is now possible from the transaction›s native notification with an easy-to-follow procedure
There are many more features still being added to the evolving PayMe ecosystem, not the least being an Apple Business Chat function. Msa3ed digital assistant users can transact through the channel thanks to the chatbot, which can also answer queries and help with a multitude of other tasks.
Personalization of Msa3ed, using data analytics techniques and new coding, helps to humanize the chatbot. For example, it can predict the services a customer is most likely to use upon login, helping them find answers or transact quickly with less navigation required. Next best action recommendations become possible, and the artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot uses natural language processing (NLP) and other means to learn from multiple interactions, becoming better and more powerful over time. There are emoji-invited feedback options from its users as well to further refine its effectiveness.
As an example of how the digital assistant can help consumer banking, the MySpending option at Boubyan allows users to ask: “How much did I spend at Starbucks / Deliveroo / etc last month”? Digital gifting cards with personalized electronic e-messages are also possible with seasonal templates making the process of gifting friends or family during important milestones even easier.
Digital on-boarding
Boubyan Bank’s new digital on-boarding procedure introduced last year uses the Kuwaiti government issued PACI ID authentication methodology to enable easy digital account opening. The Public Authority for Civil Information (PACI) is a mobile-based Digital ID derived from the government’s Civil ID program. The smartphone ID allows identity verification across the country and authentication to online e-services, plus digital signatures for documents and transactions since 1 Dec 2021. It can also sign customers up to new bank accounts with full know your customer (KYC) compliance, as Boubyan has demonstrated.
The procedure can be used to open Boubyan’s new SME banking app available in Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and on Huawei’s Harmony operating system. Users can track their bank account, trade financing, cards, and salaries, and share a payment link to single or multiple payers from a manageable list. Larger corporates can also use the app with multiple access rights and user privileges catering for larger staffs.
Corporate Social Responsibility
Boubyan Bank’s win for Best CSR initiative partly came from further co-operation with the Kuwaiti government where in support of the Ministry of Health’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign it deployed its AI-powered Msa3ed digital assistant and associated analytics to encourage vulnerable age groups and other users to register for a vaccination appointment via a link to the Ministry’s webpage. Those caught abroad or travelling could also get embassy numbers, addresses, emergency numbers and so on, alongside the usual foreign exchange (FX) rates upon landing in a country. The service was targeted at the 25 most popular countries, including those of guest and frontline workers.
Cash prizes were also on offer to 20 winners who took up the vaccination invitations, as the government sought to get back to normal life as soon as possible. 50,000 customers participated in the draw through the smart phone App via the Msa3ed chatbot. Msa3ed was also used to quickly automate deferred loan repayment packages, as follows:
Deferred Instalments: Following Kuwait’s pandemic policy, bank users were given the option to defer loan or rent instalments for up to six months or keep them as they were. Using the Msa3ed chatbot, instead of call centers or interactive voice response (IVR) like rival banks, meant the procedure could be done in seconds.
Productivity: was enhanced with full-time equivalent (FTE) hours spent falling dramatically versus the old procedure. This was advantageous because the reduced number of staff available during Coiv-19 could more easily manage any minor loan exceptions handling tasks or, more commonly, be redeployed to answer different queries.
Other CSR initiatives included the Tetaman youth initiative in cooperation with the Sheghel.com platform, where a group of freelancers offered free services to Kuwaiti SME owners, especially those severely impacted by the pandemic, to help them access services to grow their business via productivity seminars, marketing, internal management efficiency aids, and so on.
The participation of 150 bank employed volunteers rehabilitating beaches for World Cleanup Day was also noteworthy, as were the Beat Obesity and Diabetes campaigns, which respectively provided free medical tests for body mass and blood pressure / glucose levels for 9,500+ Boubyan customers and non-customers alike.
MENA Islamic Banker of the Year
Boubyan Bank’s vice chair and group CEO, Adel Al- Majed, was named the best Islamic banker in the region at the MENA Banking Excellence Awards 2022 for the way he has turned the Islamic bank around after joining in 2009, following the global financial crisis the year before. He returned it to profit by establishing new governance, financial and risk management frameworks, and reengineering the bank to be the first choice for Kuwait’s young with its extensive range of digital services.
Assets have gone from US$4 billion to US$21bn and the new strategic direction and focus on wealth management (WM), via the Bank of London and the Middle East (BLME) offshore capabilities and provision of digital tools for the affluent and mass affluent segments, has paid dividends. The bank’s culture is now extremely strong, as is its focus on customer service and future growth avenues.
Al-Majed is a 40-year veteran of the national banking scene having joined National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) in 1980, rising from executive to assistant general and deputy general manager, before becoming general manager (GM) of consumer banking in 1998. He was deputy CEO before joining Boubyan Bank in 2009 to lead its successful turnaround.
A graduate of the University of Alexandria with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, Al-Majed has also attended various US management training programs at Harvard, Wharton and Stanford. He is also:
Previous Chairman of the Kuwait Banking Association (KBA),
A member of the finance & investment committee at the country’s Chamber of Commerce & Industry,
& a board member at the Institute of Banking Studies.