Kuwaiti citizens are proud of the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), the country’s largest bank by assets, and for good reason. NBK views itself as a pillar of the corporate and financial community. It deserves to win this award for several reasons, starting with its willingness to connect with worthy new initiatives.
Last year, the bank disbursed $75 million to community schemes. Tamaka, a youth programme, helps Kuwaiti graduates to discover their career path and acquire new skills that enable them to thrive in the private sector.
Bankee’s main aim is to supercharge financial literacy rates among students. The programme, co-sponsored by the country’s education ministry and Nazaha, Kuwait’s anticorruption authority, instils educational, social and financial values in primary and middle-school students – in effect it makes them better and more financially self-aware citizens. The pilot phase includes 11 middle schools for the academic year 2022/23; it has trained and onboarded more than 500 teachers and helped around 5,000 students.
NBK gives generously to both.
“At the core of NBK’s corporate responsibility initiatives lies a strong dedication to empowering youth and women,” says Manal Al Mattar, head of group corporate communications at NBK. “We achieve this mission by offering mentorship, creating educational pathways, facilitating access to financial resources and actively working toward building a society that is more inclusive.”
Another initiative is NBK Rise, a nine-month programme that helps women foster skills to prepare them for leadership roles, including those in the financial sector. The internal programme aims to create a self-sustaining community of female leaders across regions, sectors and specializations.
Launched in 2022, Rise is the brainchild of NBK deputy group chief executive Shaikha Al-Bahar, head of talent management Najlaa Al Sager, and NBK Capital’s head of corporate communications, Alia Abou El Fath. The trio created a programme that fosters interpersonal and communications skills and prepares professional women for higher leadership roles.
At the core of NBK’s corporate responsibility initiatives lies a strong dedication to empowering youth and women
Manal Al Mattar
It also brings together female leaders from across the world and is augmented by networking opportunities and the ability to connect with mentors from across the global corporate and financial sectors. To date, 55 individuals have graduated from the scheme, including participants in Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE.
NBK continues to help struggling communities and needy causes in its push to be a better corporate citizen. Its children’s hospital provides high-quality specialist medical and palliative care to patients under the age of 16. In 2022, the bank donated $43 million to the construction of a new medical facility and assigned three members of staff to oversee the project. Over the course of last year, the hospital, which opened in 2000 and was part funded by NBK, treated more than 18,000 children.
Like all regional and global winners of this award, NBK’s corporate activism is longstanding and far-reaching. It does many things well. And it ensures available resources are used wisely without being stretched too thin. In 2022, it allocated money to protecting threatened coral reefs and to recycling more than 2,500 kilogrammes of plastic otherwise destined for landfills.
