As more banks in the Middle East invest in their digital transformations, the largest banks in the region are competing to develop new digital products and services.
Yet few banks in the region come close to Euromoney’s best digital bank – Mashreq.
The UAE-based lender may not be the largest in the region, but it has consistently been the most digitally innovative – an interesting dynamic for one of the oldest banks in the UAE, established in 1967.
Its approach has paid off. The bank has seen a 65% reduction in deal costs, while deal turnaround time has fallen by 70%.
When a bank has focused on digital innovation so consistently for so long, the challenge is to bring something new to the table. For Mashreq’s retail bank, the standout development in the year under review was the transformation of Neo, its mobile banking app.
Mashreq expanded Neo and consolidated the bank’s wider personal banking digital offering into the one app. This included, for example, integrating its previously separate Islamic offering, creating a more straightforward user experience.
The bank added digital wealth-management tools, both for private-banking clients and the retail segment through Neo. This gives customers easier access to different investment options, including IPOs and mutual funds. The bank has also added the Portfolio 360 tool that gives customers an interactive view of their holdings and performance across different asset classes and currencies, with options for a deep dive into portfolio and individual securities.
Other enhancements to Neo include extending the depth and breadth of the chatbot service and making this available to Mashreq Gold customers.
For Mashreq’s retail bank, the standout development in the year under review was the transformation of Neo, its mobile banking app
For corporate clients, the bank launched its electronic facial-recognition technology to enable 100% paperless, digital onboarding for large, corporate banking clients. The digital onboarding journey now has an adoption rate of 99.5% and the bank maintains a net promoter score of 80 for this feature.
Leveraging on its digital footprint in the UAE, Mashreq is now expanding its retail digital offering into Egypt and soon Pakistan, with aspiration for additional Gulf Cooperation Council markets. Key pillars of this include the roll-out of the Mashreq mobile banking app, and digital onboarding together with an AI-powered virtual assistant.
“As we move forward, we remain committed to maintaining high standards of service delivery and operational resilience,” says Ahmed Abdelaal, group CEO at Mashreq.
