Innovation at Emirates NBD

Emirates NBD is nominated in the Transformative Innovator of the Year category at the Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2024. We asked the bank to present its strategy and actions in terms of innovation.

Why do you consider your company a Global Transformative Innovator?

Innovation is embedded in the DNA of Emirates NBD, with our vision of becoming “the most innovative bank for our customers, people and communities”.

We have had a long history of innovation, with many “first-to-markets” launched over the last decade, including the region’s first digital-only bank (Liv), first video-assisted banking facility, and first voice banking on Alexa.

Over the last two years, as part of our digital acceleration journey, we have transformed all our customer- facing channels:

• Mobile: Launched a new mobile app called ENBD X with over 200 services

• Digital Wealth: Launched new mobile platform offering equities, mutual funds, and fractional bonds

• Tablet Banking: Launched instant assisted banking journeys for all our products

• Website: Migrated to the faster, more secure Sitecore platform and launched a self-service portal

• ATMs/CDMs: Reengineered all machines and upgraded software

• Liv: Revamped our digital-only bank to cater to “Generation Now” and added 10 new innovative products

How is a culture of innovation achieved across your company?

• Clear strategy: Our digital strategy is to enable i3 banking:

o   Instant banking: Pursue advanced automation and double down on the STP ratio for service and sales transactions

o    Intelligent banking: Build advanced personalization and focus on data and analytics to anticipate our customers’ needs and wants.

o   Innovative banking: Continue to lead innovation by leveraging partnerships, connecting with ecosystems and exploring new business models.

• Centers of Excellence: We have established multiple CoEs, including:

o   Future Labs, a strategic think tank and testing center that cultivates the creation, discovery, validation, and acceleration of completely new ideas from the fintech ecosystem

o   Advanced Analytics Center, which has built a Data Science Platform as a set of tools and infrastructure to spearhead the bank’s modelling efforts

o   Digital Asset Lab, a robust platform enabling co-creation and experimentation for the development of innovative ideas in financial services using digital assets and its underlying technologies

What are the major goals and results obtained from your ongoing innovation strategy?

Our vision to become the “the most innovative bank for our customers, people and communities” and our digital acceleration journey over the last two years have enabled us to achieve the following results:

• 32% y-o-y rise in revenue and 65% y-o-y increment in net profit in 2023

• 25% improvement in our NPS over the last 2 years

• 98% of our customer requests now have a digital or self-service channel available

• 4.7 – rating of our mobile app ENBD X, ranked 1st on Apple App Store in the finance category in the region

• 118% increase in IT platform activity, with just 8% rise in IT costs in 2023

• 54% reduction in rework and 80% reduction in defects achieved in two years

• 32% rise in efficiency of engineers and 43% improvement in on-time delivery

• 20% yearly growth in sourcing of retail products with no increment in back-office work

• 61% improvement in our servicing TAT in 2023

How does your company manage the overall innovation process?

Our innovation process:

• While building new products and services, we incorporate early feedback via prototyping and usability testing, ensuring that business requirements and product usability are tested even before a line of code is written.

• Our teams are empowered to be gate keepers for best customer experience, to think differently, to reinvent processes, to mitigate risks and to develop a reliable product/service.

• Our business teams are heavily involved in the overall process, fostering greater accuracy and higher quality standards. Meanwhile, our leadership maintains alignment among all stakeholders, helping prioritize product features and empowering teams to overcome challenges.

• We follow an agile delivery framework, allowing us to make incremental enhancements and add value on ongoing basis.

• We also promote a culture of ongoing knowledge sharing, with recurring thematic training sessions, on both new technologies and financial products and services.