More digital services for everyone, and specific tools for millennials such as its enhanced smartphone-only Liv fully digital bank, helped Emirates NBD (ENBD) win Best Retail Bank: UAE at the recent MENA Banking Excellence Awards 2022. The use of analytics on anti-money laundering (AML) duties won it Best Application of Data Analytics, while its tech-savvy status was confirmed by its Best Social Media Marketing Campaign win.
The social marketing trophy was awarded for ENBD’s SaveWinDrive promotion, which celebrated the United Arab Emirates (UAE) national day on 2 December 2021 marking 50 years since the Emirates were founded in 1971. For this Golden Jubilee a special edition Mercedes car, only 50 of which were made, was offered to three savers at the bank.
The #PeopleWithoutLimits empowerment program was also noteworthy as it highlighted the diverse global community that has built Dubai in the UAE over the last 50 years by thinking positively, training and empowering themselves. This attitude has built the world’s tallest building in Dubai, the 2020 Expo fair park, and much else besides.
Additionally, ENBD’s #FastWithFriends project uses influencers on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, to encourage social cohesion and understanding during the muslim holy month of Ramadan. It encourages nonmuslims in the diverse Dubai community, which has 8.84 million ex-pats, to join the fast or at least be aware and respectful of it. Different rush hour timings, sometimes shorter work times, tired and hungry people who can only eat at night and so on, are all noticeable impacts of Ramadan. #FastWithFriends seeks understanding, while also soliciting donations to the Al Jalila children’s hospital from the 1,150 non-muslims who decided to join the fast – as one of the main tenants of Ramadan is to do good. AED 500,000 Emirati Dirhams (US$136,147) resulted. The campaign reached 10 million people.
Data analytics win
ENBD won the Best Application of Data Analytics trophy at the MENA Banking Excellence Awards 2022 because of the quantitative scorecards they developed in the anti-money laundering (AML) field covering application and behavior, which classify customers into high, medium, or low risk. High risk customers are identified sooner, reducing false positives and expensive manual interventions are only deployed when necessary. The model has been validated by KPMG and turned into a whitepaper. It complies with all relevant AML guidelines from the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE), which state that “large FIs may elect to assess customer risk by using more sophisticated scorecards”.
Implementation has saved the bank AED8.9 million Emirati Dirhams (US$2.42m) and cut false positives as it more accurately identifies bad customers and better targets the use of manual interventions. Other benefits include:
Reduced reputational risk, as fines from increasingly strict regulators and bad publicity are now less likely.
Enhanced comprehensive risk oversight and mitigation procedures.
Fewer correspondent bank alerts, as strong onboarding and monitoring of transactions, portfolios and behavior cut false alerts.
Improved customer experience (CX), as good customers are bothered less and don’t suffer overdue delays
The solution uses data from various systems collated and analyzed to design a statistical scoring framework that addresses the risk assessment requirements identified at different stages of the compliance lifecycle, spanning onboarding, portfolio and transaction risk behaviors. These are split into specific scorecards, covering: Application & Behavior.
Future plans from the analytics team rewarded with the trophy at ENBD include developing a dedicated data warehouse that can centralize all data automatically from different source systems to give a better single view and single version of customer level data. Various stakeholders will be tapped, such as internal structured data from the bank, credit information and external unstructured social media or other sources. This will further improve the quality and consistency of the data used to detect AML threats and further refine the models’ behavior and customer monitoring activities.
Retail revolution in consumer banking
Emirates NBD has already extensively digitized its retail bank offering, with digital loans, cards and wealth applications, videocalls, increased online transfer limits, mobile functionality, and email based sign-up procedures for an online platform aimed at for Small-to-Medium Sized Enterprise (SME) clients, among many noteworthy initiatives. The introduction of ‘Smart Pass’, a new soft token-based authentication service has also increased security and convenience, and further encouraged digital uptake.
ENBD now records 96% of its transactions as digital only, plus:
80% of individual customers are digitally active on a monthly basis (mobile & online).
The vast majority of this figure favor mobile banking (95%), proving the success of the bank’s mobile-first strategy. A recent example is the launch of a limited-edition prepaid card, in partnership with MasterCard, for the Expo 2020 in Dubai accessible only on the dedicated Joyn mobile app from ENBD.
A digital identity verification feature on the enhanced mobile account opening service at ENBD has already led to 24% choosing this channel to on-board and open an account with the bank. Further enhancements, and reasons for its Best Retail Bank: UAE win, are its Liv smartphone bank for millennials which now has almost 100,000 customers and rising, an extension into the Saudi Arabian marketplace, and new options – namely:
Liv Prime: a membership program that offers premium lifestyle benefits.
Liv Credit Card: on a smartphone allows users to switch between different reward programs and easily access benefits.
Liv Young: a child’s mobile account that is opened and overseen by parents of kids between 8-17. It brings new customers into the bank and signals the way towards a fully digital future for customers and the banks that provide their financial services.