Emirates NBD has enjoyed an outstanding year including the launch of digital bank Liv, rolled out Eva, a chatbot for assistance and Pepper, a humanoid artificial intelligence robot for customer engagement. And now it has scooped the award for best retail bank Middle East at RBI’s awards. Douglas Blakey reports
Where to start: a stunning year for Emirates NBD. Liv, new future labs in Dubai to expand its multichannel operations Eva, Pepper, and an enhanced mePAY cash transfer service has all worked wonders.
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Just some of the highlights at Emirates NBD: a clear and worthy winner of RBI’s global annual award for best retail bank, Middle East.
Emirates NBD has been among the most innovative leading retail banks around the world with particular emphasis on optimising its digital and multichannel offerings.
The launch of Liv has attracted global attention. Users of Liv are able to open their bank accounts instantly from their smartphones by scanning their Emirates ID card. Customers will also receive a Liv debit card for making cash withdrawals and online shopping.
The new offering includes a range of features that display a curated daily feed of events and selected deals, as well as offer insights on users’ transactional history and spending patterns.
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By GlobalDataLiv was designed to offer customers a unique experience that will allow them to access lifestyle opportunities while enabling them to better manage their finances – and is already delivering.
According to the bank, Liv. combines the “seemingly incongruent modules of banking and lifestyle to offer a fun, social and intelligent banking experience for a self-reliant and digital native generation”
The roll out of Emirates NBD’s stunning Future Lab within Dubai’s Emirates Towers, showcasing the bank’s ongoing drive towards digital innovation and multichannel transformation, was another highlight of the past year.
It was described by RBI editorial panel adviser Michael Allen, founder and CEO of allen international as “quite fantastic – the best thing we have done and the reaction has been amazing.”
The branch is designed to accelerate the development of next-generation digital and mobile banking services with the aim of increasing digital banking adoption in the UAE.
It incorporates a Digital Banking Zone offering self-service banking facilities where customers can use intelligent teller machines providing video connections to remote service staff against a backdrop of a large digital wall.
A Future Banking Zone is the first of its kind in the UAE, and showcases digital innovations developed with technology partners such as the Visa Connected Car, MasterCard’s Virtual Shopping Experience, and SAP’s Augmented Reality Real Estate and Mortgage Digital Solutions.
Other notable hits for Emirates NBD include:
Eva: This is the first AI-based chatbot virtual assistant for banking in the Middle East and North Africa. The bank’s Future Lab is piloting Eva’s voice capabilities via a customer user group. The test version includes chatbot capabilities via the bank’s Facebook messenger, and will soon to be extended to its mobile banking app.
An enhanced mePAY cash transfer service: This facility enables cash transfers to recipients who are not Emirates NBD customers or do not have a bank account. The expanded offering, which works via any Emirates NBD ATM or customers’ mobile banking app, enables customers to transfer cash to anyone in the UAE using only the recipient’s mobile number.
Pepper: A humanoid artificial intelligence robot adds a fun element to customer engagement.
Emirates NBD is also the first bank in the UAE to link its interest rates and customer eligibility for personal lending and credit cards by utilising the Al Etihad Credit Bureau (AECB) Consumer Retail Banking Score.
The move brings a number of benefits including optimisation of credit scoring, improved customer experience as a result of quicker decision making by the bank and greater transparency.
Utilising AECB’s data will also help Emirates NBD to improve loss rates by offering the lowest rates to low-risk consumers while charging higher rates of interest for higher risk customers.
Other Emirates NBD Q1 2017 highlights include:
- First quarter 2017 net profit for the three months to end March 2017 rose by 4% to AED1.87bn ($509.1m) helped by a control on expenses and lower provisions;
- Emirates NBD’s cost income ratio improved to 30.9% from 32% in the year ago quarter;
- Total assets increased by 9% year-on-year to AED452bn;
- Total loans were up 6% year-on-year to AED295.3bn with deposits +10% to AED319.2bn.
