Bahrain Islamic Bank B S C : The Rise of the Invisible Bank

Frictionless Connectivity is the Future of Corporate Banking

By Jawad Humaidan, Acting Chief of Corporate & Institutional Banking, BisB

At the heart of every progressive company lies the inherent knowledge that in order to survive in today's day and age, continual improvement must go beyond products and services offered, which are continually revamped in order to keep pace with technological advancements and evolving needs of clientele. Moreover, strategic discussions ought to happen at each and every level of departments, not merely the executive level, in order to ensure teams are working with creativity, out-of-the box thinking, and most importantly - swift proactivity.

The ongoing pandemic has further catalyzed the evolution of industries, spurred by a rapid, almost overnight shift of clients' expectations and operating models, where companies were forced to reinvent the wheel to merely keep up. Across industries around the world, the financial industry being no exception, organisations have come to the realization that traditional corporate models no longer fit in the face of the new normal.

Ultimately, almost every customer touchpoint today has been digitized, with everything under the sun - from clothes, to meals and groceries, all the way to pharmaceuticals - all a single click away, and delivered right to your doorstep. Increasingly, traditional stores have become 'invisible', replaced with seamless digital experiences. Naturally, clients have come to expect the same hassle-free experience for financial services.

In the past two years, the banking and financial sector as a whole has been quick to react, showing flexibility and agility in shifting to a more tech-oriented, multichannel platform approach; in order to maintain client relationships. It is safe to say that currently, retail banking is at its prime, with endless new mobile applications being launched every day, enabling clients to benefit from a multitude of services, empowering them to conduct daily transactions from anywhere, and the flexibility of automating transactions entirely, in the likes of scheduled bill payments or savings.

Corporate banking, on the other hand, tends to linger slightly behind. This lag is not due to a lack of ambition, but in light of several realities. For one, there is fierce competition in the form of a constant flow of newcomers alongside established fintech players and tech giants, which are not constrained by the same regulations or large-scale operational frameworks of conventional banks. Beyond this, the world of corporate banking often involves dealing with large-sum investments, and more often than not, many clients still prefer the comfort of face-to-face interactions. Beyond this, the requirements of corporate banking customers are far more complex in nature, and more often than not, they pose a heightened exposure to risk, and require more advanced levels of security and corporate governance measures.

At BisB, we pride ourselves on pushing the boundaries of innovation with our tech-driven mindset and ethos of simplifying money matters for our clients. Consistently, we have launched user-friendly digital solutions, in the likes of BisB Corporate Digital, a fully bi-lingual end-to-end digital service that allows both individual establishments and Sijili customers to open a corporate account using advanced facial recognition technology directly from the mobile app within a matter of minutes. Through the seamless application, the service provides the ultimate level of convenience completely eliminating the need for corporate customers to visit branches in person. We also have plans to expand our digital onboarding system to accommodate other types of companies during the course of this year. Yet, these services are only the beginning, we still have a long way to go as banks.

Now more than ever, especially in the wake of the ongoing pandemic, the time has come for the corporate banking sector to take digitization to the next level and radically elevate traditional financial services. This requires the increased adoption of intelligent solutions that constructively utilize the power of AI and advanced technology to provide digital software that can easily be altered and refined based on clients' needs. Throughout this journey, the onus lies on us as providers of these services to thoroughly familiarize our clients with how to use these new solutions and services, especially with regards to the generations that are not as comfortable with technology.

In order to truly emerge as pioneers going forward, banks need to maintain a more solution-oriented mindset, always challenging the status-quo, molding services to be more personalized, and more seamless, in order to earn their clients' trust and loyalty in the long-term.