PIONEERING PROGRESS

Shaikha Khaled Al Bahar, Deputy Group CEO of the National Bank of Kuwait Group, has spent her career rising through the ranks of Kuwait’s biggest banking group. Away from the bottom line, she’s focused on making her stamp on her country’s social growth.

BY CLAUDINE COLETTI

In November 2022, when Shaikha Khaled Al Bahar, Deputy Group CEO of the National Bank of Kuwait Group (NBK), took to the stage at the Arab Bankers Association’s annual event to accept the “Distinguished Services to Arab Banking Award 2022,” she wanted to take a different approach in her acceptance speech. As the first woman to ever win the award, Al Bahar wanted to stress the realities of her journey rather than focusing on the highs alone. “These accounts make it seem like a career in our field is a smooth upward trajectory, but here I was at the pinnacle of my career. I built from the ground up with a unique opportunity to show what it takes,” she remembers. “I chose to have a different approach where I shared my personal experience. The truth is I had to double the work to prove myself.”

Al Bahar has been with NBK for over 35 years— more than half the time the bank has existed, having first been established in 1952. In that time, the bank has grown to become the biggest in Kuwait, recording profits of over $1.7 billion from a net operating income of $3.3 billion in 2022, up from over $1.2 billion profits from a net operating income of $2.9 billion in 2021. The bank offers alternative investments through its NBK Capital subsidiary, which it founded in 2005, and offers both traditional services and Shari’ah-compliant financial services through its major shareholding in Kuwait’s Islamic Boubyan Bank, which was established in 2004. As of November 2022, NBK Capital had executed over $91 billion worth of investment banking mandates since inception. The expansive banking group had $18.6 billion in funds under management as of December 31, 2022, and a market cap of nearly $27 billion as of January 23, 2023.

IToday, NBK is present in 13 countries, and while it’s open to new opportunities, it has no current plans to expand geographically, according to the deputy group CEO. “We are in Asia through Singapore and China. We are in Europe through Paris and London, and we are in New York and the GCC,” says Al Bahar. “Currently, the focus is on our existing markets, but we are open to any opportunity, and inorganic growth is still on the table if an opportunity that has synergy with our strategy arises.” However, NBK is expanding in a number of other ways, including through education and technology.

In November 2022, the bank launched its Bankee education program in collaboration with Creative Confidence and in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and the Kuwait Anticorruption Authority. The financial literacy course aims to introduce and teach school students about financial culture, including budgeting and saving and financial responsibilities. As of January 2023, over 2,433 students and 507 teachers had enrolled in Bankee, which means “my bank” in Arabic. “This will give them the culture of how to save rather than keep spending,” Al Bahar explains.

This initiative to help Kuwait’s children learn more about the world of finance came just a year after NBK launched its Weyey Bank app. NBK established Weyey Bank in November 2021, targeting the tech-savvy youth segment between the ages of 15 and 24. This accounts for a large part of Kuwait’s population. Around 40% of the country’s population is under 24 years old, and 25% are under 15, according to PwC. “We learned from experience that disruption is bound to happen, so we decided to lead the change,” says Al Bahar. “We started from scratch and built from the ground up. We delivered the digital bank in just 12 months. We will, of course, be eager to have this digital bank contributing to the bottom line.”

NBK will soon face competition in the digital banking market from its home turf. In February 2022, the Central Bank of Kuwait issued new guidelines around the establishment of digital banks and opened a six-month application process. By the end of June 2022, it had reportedly received applications from at least three alliances and was planning to grant two new licenses for independent digital banks by the end of 2022.

“Major banks in Kuwait are now trying to find strategic alliances to support the consumer and economic need for digitization, whilst creating added value through innovative business models and financial solutions for Kuwait’s tech-savvy population,” says Kareem Refaay, Managing Director at the London Institute of Banking & Finance MENA. “In the near future we will be seeing more banks and new banks launching in Kuwait to meet the consumer expectations thanks to the regulator push.”

According to other experts it’s already having an impact. “The Fintech ecosystem has already seen significant progress since the banking regulations were introduced in Kuwait in February 2022,” says Abhinav Agarwal, Risk Advisory partner at Deloitte Middle East. “Conventional banks have seriously undertaken digital transformation by launching digital channels within the existing operating model or by entering into strategic partnerships with Fintechs. While the Fintech ecosystem is still young in Kuwait, the competitive Fintech scene across the GCC will lead Kuwait to catch up and move towards realizing its Vision 2035.”

For NBK, getting ahead of the curve has given it an opportunity to embed its mobile banking options with its investment arm, SmartWealth, which enables customers to also access investment services in-app, such as transferring funds and viewing their portfolios. “Most banks focus on pushing clients to spend, spend, spend, and banks keep lending, lending, lending, but SmartWealth is giving clients the opportunity to start saving,” explains Al Bahar. “This is really a very ambitious plan for digital banking, and we are really happy with the outcomes.” NBK’s headquarters in Kuwait City already house a digital lab focused on conducting market research and scouting the global Fintech market for new ideas as well as developing its own product solutions, with the bank now using data analytics, robotic process automation, and machine learning in its operations.

“Middle Eastern banks continue to evolve their digital drive as clients opt for mobile banking apps in order to facilitate transactions,” says Dahlia

Sabaayon, Senior Investment Analyst at investment management company Al Dhabi Capital. “Banks continue to reduce the number of physical branches as the region’s demographic adopts online banking applications.” and urban planning, healthcare, human resources, education, and economic sectors, among others. “The focus was on Vision 2035, so the core of it is to have the government as regulator, policy-maker, and allow the private sector to handle operations,” she explains. “They are building bridges, establishing companies, creating jobs, but they have to go to the private sector to build more efficiency.” While her teams’ recommendations were not taken on during her tenure, Al Bahar is hopeful that the future will see some progressive steps forward.

It’s a very different landscape compared to when Al Bahar first entered the industry, having first joined the company in the 80s as a fresh graduate. She started as a trainee at a local branch of the bank and has since gradually climbed the ranks, becoming deputy group CEO in 2014. “I was very curious and eager to learn. I wasn’t going to settle for a routine job. I continued to ask questions, learn, and grow, never accepting any limitations to what I could do, and this opened the sky for me,” she remembers. However, it was not an easy journey, with late nights and going the extra mile par for the course to differentiate herself from the crowd.

Keen to proactively initiate positive change, in 2022, Al Bahar and NBK established NBK RISE—a women-led leadership initiative designed by women for women to bring together corporate entities and female executives to elevate women in the workforce. The program creates a community of female leaders from Kuwait and beyond to train and develop women to be more involved in strategy, improve their technical skills, and motivate others. Participant companies sign an NBK RISE Pledge to increase women’s representation in leadership positions.

Al Bahar recalls making site visits to ensure that projects NBK was financing ran on time and often working until the early hours of the morning to get contracts over the line. One night in 2002, while working on the Sulabiya Waste Water Treatment Plant project—one of Kuwait’s first build–operate–transfer (BOT) projects—she describes being in the office until 5 am to close the deal. “I went home, I got orange juice, I took a bath, and I went back to the office at 6:30 am. I love to put myself under pressure; I am a workaholic,” she admits.

As a testament to this, as well as throwing her all into her day job, Al Bahar has also sat on several in-house and external committees and groups over the years, including becoming a member of Kuwait’s Supreme Council for Planning and Development by Emiri decree in 2018. The fouryear tenure saw her actively working to make recommendations to the government to make improvements to Kuwait’s human development

According to a report by Deloitte and The 30% Club that looked across 72 countries, 19.7% of board seats were held by women globally in 2021, an increase of 2.8% compared to 2018. In MENA, 10.2% of board seats were found to be held by women in 2021, compared to 9.5% in 2018 and 11.3% in 2016. This is something NBK RISE is seeking to improve. “Female executives provide a greater degree of creative thinking, and companies with more female representation engage more with social causes,” explains Al Bahar. “Companies with a greater proportion of female executives and board members have been shown to score higher at social responsibility, corporate governance, and transparency.”

Experts agree, but there is work to be done. “Kuwaiti women represent 25% of the national workforce as per the latest data reported in 2021. This number has been increasing year over year with the majority of the female workforce focused on public sector entities,” says Tamer Charife, Risk Advisory Partner at Deloitte Middle East. “However, female representation at leadership roles remains on the lower side, and that calls for critical intervention at a national level through the development and introduction of targeted programs for empowering gender diversity in the Kuwaiti workforce in strategic and leadership roles.”

NBK RISE is clearly a project that is very close to Al Bahar’s heart. “I always take things very passionately,” she admits. As of January 2023, five institutions had signed up to NBK RISE: the Alshaya Group, stc, Equate, Burgan Bank, and the Commercial Bank of Kuwait. “Women in Kuwait have long been acknowledged as pioneers, it’s not just recently, but there is much progress to be made,” she adds. “In my opinion, the two most glaring challenges are the proportion of women in leadership roles within the financial industry and closing the gender gap, mainly in wages.”

As she prepares for a potentially economically challenging year ahead, the deputy group CEO says that NBK is optimistic that the positive trend will continue in its financials, driven by diversification and digitization, against the backdrop of strong credit ratings, an improving operational environment, higher oil prices, and a lower cost of risk. But outside of taking care of the bottom line, Al Bahar is focused on her personal impact. “Each success story has its own unique twists and turns, but there are thematic necessities to success. Cultivating a positive attitude, honoring my values, and playing to my strengths have propelled my career. Now I spend more time on strategy, building teams, succession planning, and investing in people,” she explains.

“My dream is to be part of a nonprofit organization to help the community, with a focus on education. This is really my dream. I want to be part of the change.”