Warba Bank pioneered innovative digitalbanking services that position it as a digital-first bank

Warba Bank was established on February 17, 2010 to help revive the economy of Kuwait. During the same year, Warba Bank joined the Islamic Banks Register at the Central Bank of Kuwait. By leading in digitisation, it has established itself as a leader in the sector and has provided a blueprint for its peers. In an interview with International Finance Magazine, Shaheen Al Ghanim chief executive at Warba Bank described the bank’s varied offering of digitally delivered products and services, which have resulted in high ratings from its appreciative customers.

IF: How has Warba Bank adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic?

Shaheen Al Ghanim: Covid-19 has had a pounding effect on the banking sector and macro-economic factors. Despite the challenges, Warba Bank managed the situation efficiently and effectively through the implementation of sound measures to ward off the negative implications of Covid-19.

For example, through our customerservices initiatives, we are committed to strengthening our service quality to customers. We have developed various new processes and operations to combat the impact of Covid-19 on our society. Our key initiatives show how Warba has played its part. As an example, we launched an integrated queue-management system for our branches. Customers can book appointments digitally to visit their desired branches through the bank’s mobile banking app and the website. All Warba branches follow a firm policy for SOPs (standard operating procedures); limitations on the number of people in branches apply to employees and visitors to protect them from Covid-19. The policy is in line with the best practices and standards dictated by the Ministry of Health and Commerce and Industry. Also, out of transparency, Warba is publicly disclosing all incidents of Covid-19 cases discovered in its branches.

The bank continues to serve its customers during lockdowns and curfews. Since the start of the pandemic, Warba, either directly or indirectly, has served customers, namely through home delivery of card products, the call centre being available 24/7, and IT (information technology) applications and systems being maintained to an uptime of 98.86 percent during the fiscal year 2020.

We have also put forth a strategy to utilize social media and the direct channels of the bank in comforting the public. We continue to educate and spread awareness to the public about the Covid-19 SOPs and the benefits of vaccines through our far-

Region

reaching social-media channels.

Warba Bank has launched three digital wallets to retail customers for fast and contactless payments, namely Samsung Pay, which is available to Warba customers with a Mastercard credit card on Samsung devices; Fitbit Pay, for Warba customers with any active Warba credit card on compatible Fitbit smartwatches and trackers; Garmin Pay, available to Warba customers with a Mastercard credit card on compatible Garmin wearable devices.

We also introduced a fully digital onboarding service allowing new customers to open the saving account Al Sunbula through fast, simple and secure steps in less than five minutes. The service does not require customers to visit a branch in person.

On the retail-banking innovation front, Warba Bank is continuously investing in the digitisation of its banking products and services through the mobile and classic web to meet all the banking needs of its customers. This direction is in line with the bank’s long-term corporate strategy that was renewed to adapt to the ongoing circumstances created by the Covid-19 pandemic. The bank envisions leading the banking industry as a digital-first Islamic corporate and retail bank in Kuwait.

Where does Warba Bank stand on the increasing use of technology in all sectors of banking? Do you envisage the bank increasing automation and decreasing human contact?

In line with its vision to continue leading in the digital realm, Warba invests heavily in its digital banking apps and services available on iOS, Android and Huawei smartphone operating platforms for the retail-banking sector. In addition to offering essential products and services, Warba has pioneered several innovative digital-banking services that position it as a digital-first bank, especially in Kuwait. One of our top digital solutions available to retail customers is our youth banking app. Warba was the first bank to offer a banking app for youth in the region with a satisfying UX (user experience) and feature-rich interface. The banking app comes with special features, offers and discounts tailored for the segment. We also provide an in-app Mastercard Send-remittance service; the Mastercard Send service in our banking app is called Super Transfer Service. Being the first-of-its-kind remittance service in Kuwait powered by Mastercard, the service offers a unique value proposition of multiple payout channels, competitive rates, possibility of tracking payments and transferring full payments to beneficiaries without any operational charges to 30 plus countries.

And we offer our fully digital and first-of-its-kind loyalty programme in our app W-Pocket, enabling users to earn and burn loyalty points. Users earn points when paying telecom bills using Warba credit cards, inviting friends to bank with Warba and transferring personal salaries to Warba. To redeem loyalty points, users can burn points by getting certain banking services or converting points to cash.

Further, Warba partners with external companies to provide other methods for redeeming points, including the purchase of goods and services from listed merchants in the app in collaboration with the local digital-wallet solution BookeeyPay; subscription for buy-one-get-one-free offers from the popular

Entertainer App; and exchange of W-Pocket points for Oasis Club Miles from Kuwait Airways.

As well, we offer our first-of-its-kind in-app personal-finance-management service, which combines Warba’s key banking and financemanagement services as widgets on a single page in addition to new features for users, including My Portfolio, which shows previews of assets and liabilities in Warba with the ability to add balances from other locally available banks; My Cashflow, which provides snapshots of money-in and money-out from accounts in Warba; My Growth, which reveals patterns of saving in Warba accounts.

We also provide a fully digital financing product, Express Finance. Being the first of this type of digital service to market, it enables existing customers to get Al-Wafi financing of up to 250,000 KD against collateral, without the need to pay a single visit to a Warba branch. We offer a first-of-its-kind digital-money box feature called Hassala with intuitive funding methods that encourage customers to save. Also available is our innovative and personalised in-app banking advisory service Al Mustashar that identifies and suggests the best digital solutions for users’ banking needs. We have found that the most used interfaces and navigational features are fingerprint and face-identification login services as alternate login methods for users who prefer logging in without password entry; bio verification for transactions through the banking app; dark mode theme on iOS.

On the corporate-banking front, Warba launched the following digital services for clients through the corporate online portal during the year 2020: our salary-upload service for companies to transfer employee salaries directly, which is linked to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour; merchant services to reconcile company points-of-sale and payment-gateways transactions with different types of detailed merchant statements; dashboard services that summarise customers’ accounts and term deposits with the last 10 transactions; transfer service to easily transfer funds between a company’s accounts to beneficiaries in Warba Bank, local banks and international banks; enhanced access-management function to include sub-users’ access to accounts and daily transfer limits.

Do you have any examples of successful socialresponsibility initiatives or work undertaken in the community by the company?

The bank is extremely keen and open regarding its positive impact on society. As part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR), Warba Bank launched the social-banking and gamification app Fayez for Warba customers and the public with an intuitive user interface. The app comprises two components: comprehensive fitness tracking features to promote social well-being and healthy lifestyle as well as sports prediction and social engagement based on the concept of gamification.

The bank has also partnered with many charity organisations to enable and encourage customers to donate digitally. The donation methods span beyond the traditional cash donations and include donating points earned on Fayez and W-Pocket. The bank also supports SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) by featuring them in Warba’s CSR vlogs (video blogs) on social media, especially amidst the fallout period of Covid-19.

The bank is actively releasing Covid-19 educational videos for digital banking and IT-security awareness, customer financial knowledge and rights, and many other topics mandated by the Central Bank of Kuwait.