Qatar’s biggest Islamic bank remains hard to beat. Last year, it offered shareholders a 17.8% return on equity, a 2.1% return on assets and one of the industry’s lowest cost-to-income ratios at 17.4%.
Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), under chief executive Bassel Gamal, managed to reduce its non-performing assets ratio to 1.5% in 2022 from 1.8% the previous year thanks to digitally enhanced risk management tools.
Last year saw a 20% jump in mobile app users and a 48% increase in total digital transactions. As the apps attract more users, branch business is falling (by 44% since 2020), reducing costs and increasing productivity. In core retail lines, such as personal financing and credit cards, QIB’s apps are now handling more than 50% of overall sales volume.
In 2022, QIB launched Qatar’s first digital credit card. It introduced the Growing Deposit account, a digital vehicle that encourages long-term savings in fixed amounts each month – in both US dollars and Qatari riyals. QIB also offers a digital certificate of deposit in one-, two- and three-year tenors.