Bank ABC named as Best Bank for "Innovation in Digital Banking" in the Middle East by The Banker

Bank ABC, MENA’s leading international bank, has emerged as the Middle East Winner at ‘The Banker’s Innovation in Digital Banking Awards 2022’ by the Financial Times. The award underscores the success of the Bank’s multi-year Group digital transformation programme aimed at building the ‘bank of the future,’ while fuelling innovation and digital banking transformation in the MENA region and beyond. It recognises the Bank’s agile cloud-only innovation approach centred around customer needs and endeavours to enhance, leapfrog and disrupt legacy wholesale and retail banking models. 

Commenting on this award, Bank ABC Acting Group CEO, Mr. Sael Al Waary remarked: “We are honoured to be recognized as the Middle East winner in The Banker’s Innovation in Digital Banking Awards 2022. Receiving this award inspires us to continue to invest and innovate to create the bank of the future. Innovation is at the heart of our strategy, and we are committed to creating a new digital platform leveraging our digital eco-system to deliver the best banking experience for our customers.” 

“I sincerely thank The Banker for this prestigious recognition and our Board, shareholders and colleagues for their commitment to our ongoing digital transformation journey.”

On behalf of The Banker, the Deputy Editor, Liz Lumley said, "Bank ABC impressed with its comprehensive transformation of both the retail and wholesale bank to take advantage of cloud-native technologies, Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analytics and open APIs, while the goals of ABC Labs presented a clear and mature innovation strategy." 

The evaluation took into account three key examples, namely the Wholesale Bank’s accelerated digital transformation and leading-edge digital deployments that have transformed client experience, including a regional-first digital corporate onboarding service and modernised Supply Chain Finance platform; the continued customer-driven innovation at the digital mobile-only ila Bank, including 24 app releases within the last 18 months; and the role of ABC labs in spearheading digital innovation within the Group and across the industry. 

Most notably, ABC Labs facilitated a flagship digital currency payment, in collaboration with the Central Bank of Bahrain and JP Morgan, and led a major Cloud transformation exercise for the Wholesale Bank, enabling it to become increasingly agile, innovative and data-driven.

The Banker’s highly coveted Innovation in Digital Banking awards are considered the benchmark for innovation excellence and recognizes the most transformative digitisation initiatives in the global banking industry. In addition to evaluating leading-edge technology implementations, the organisers gauged the role of leadership, culture and collaboration in attaining success, and Bank ABC has excelled across all these dimensions.