Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) plans to open three more branches in UAE this year, with a thrust on digital banking, Philip King, the bank’s global head of retail banking, said in an exclusive interview.
ADIB, the largest Sharia-compliant lender in Abu Dhabi, currently has 86 branches in the UAE — where competition in the retail sector is intensifying.
“We are planning to open a few more branches in the UAE,” King said.
“Our ambition is to serve our customers the best way possible.
“We are still seeing customers who want to go to our branches and they want to be served in our branch network despite the fact that we have an incredible growth in our digital platforms.”
The official said more than 90 per cent of the bank’s transactions were being completed through its ATMs and digital platforms.
“Our mobile app platform takes more than two million financial transactions a month,” King said.
Acknowledging that the branch traffic was falling, King said the bank would be transforming its branch network to serve and give better customer experience for the clients.
- Philip King | ADIB’s global head of retail banking
“It will be a full branch transformation strategy. We will still offer the traditional products and the traditional services but there will be some self-service and digital channels which customers are very happy to use. We will offer them very secure means of carrying out their financial transactions and will be offering them advice on sales support through our staff as well. “
In the UAE, a branch in Dubai is expected to open towards the end of this year. Similarly one branch will open in Al Ain as well as another in Abu Dhabi (consolidation of two branches) in 2018.
In the region, ADIB has a presence in six markets including the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Sudan and Qatar. The bank also has operations in London, United Kingdom.
“We have a consumer finance business in Saudi Arabia which is doing extremely well. If there are opportunities we will be looking at that.”
Speaking on the performance of the retail bank business, he said the retail segment of the bank grew around 28 per cent in 2017 compared to the previous year and is expected to grow further due to increase in the number of customers as well as improvement in the economy due to higher oil prices.
“ADIB had a high net income growth level of around 18 per cent last year. The retail bank is the major contributor to that and grew probably around 27-28 per cent year-on-year in 2017 versus 2016. So a lot of growth and that has continued into 2018 where we now crossed the one million customer mark.”
“Our deposits have grown three times faster so far in the first half of this year versus the market. Our assets have grown around 2 per cent. We are happy with the consistent and continued solid growth and performance of the retail bank.”
The bank has seen a good growth in the cards business as well as in loans, he added.
“Credit card growth has been good, year-on-year spend has [risen] more than 10 per cent. The number of cards has been growing too. I think for the cards market, particularly where we have seen growth is in debit cards. [There has been] a lot of spend increase on debit cards, more than 20 per cent. More than 23 per cent growth in debit cards fee year-on-year so that has become an important payment mechanism.”
“In loans, we’ve grown faster than market. The market has been flat to down, in fact it’s been negative in the first half. We had around 2 per cent growth. The highest growth has been home finance. The personal finance has been relatively stable but we have grown certainly in the second quarter.”
He also said Islamic banking is becoming popular and was expected to grow further due to its transparency.
