Dubai: The Board of Directors of the UAE Banks Federation (UBF), a professional representative body comprising 48-member banks operating in the UAE, recently held a meeting to review the progress of the initiatives the federation launched in 2017, and also adopted a priorities and action plan for 2018.
“Rising customer expectations, increasing cyber threats and a number of significant developments shaping the banking regulatory environment have generated a greater need for more collective efforts to enable banks to stay relevant while enhancing their business strategies,” AbdulAziz Al Ghurair, Chairman of UBF, said in a statement.
“Our second meeting this year was to assess various initiatives launched earlier this year, aiming to bring state of the art innovative changes to the country’s financial sector and to mull over the best strategies for the year ahead.”
The board has reviewed the progress of the key initiatives of 2017 such as the Cyber-threat intelligence sharing platform launched in September with the aim of safeguarding the banking sector from cyber threats.
The UBF board also deliberated the implementation of frameworks developed by the federation, in line with global best practice, on ethical selling practices in the retail banking and wealth management sectors, as well as the handling of the customer complaints framework.
The board addressed progress on banks’ implementation of the nationalisation strategy as well as increased bank financing to the small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SME) segment.
While discussing the new brand identity of the UBF and the pivotal role it plays in driving the continuous growth and development of the country’s banking sector, the board discussed the latest trends such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data and financial technology (fintech).
