BisB Announces Winner of Innovation Challenge

Following the appointment of Bahrain Islamic Bank’s (BisB) judging panel for the “BisB Innovation Challenge” competition, which was run as part of the Bank’s partnership with the CBB Digital Lab “FinHub 973”, the winner was recently announced as Verofax, founded by Wassim Merheby and their technology partner Turnkey Lender. Verofax proposed a unique approach and emerged as the Fintech with the potential to build a promising Proof of Concept (PoC) for the sought solution.

The appointed judging panel comprising of Osama Nasr, Chief Information Officer of BisB, Wesam Baqer, Chief Corporate & Institutional Banking of BisB, and Yasmeen Al Sharaf, Head of Fintech and Innovation Unit at the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB); deliberated to make an initial selection of ten applicants, which were subsequently narrowed down to five that presented in a demo day on 18 January 2021.  

 Verofax, a Globally Mature and enterprise ready Fintech, was selected after rigorous screening to ensure a solution with the requisite level of feasibility and security to maintain the confidentiality and security of customers’ financial data. 

Panel judge Wesam Baqer, Chief Corporate & Institutional Banking of BisB reiterated support of the winning FinTech, stating, “We are confident that the Credit Scoring solution will bring a level of innovation to the banking industry that is both convenient and safe. The sought solution will ultimately simplify money matters for our customers’ securely, and it will streamline internal operations while providing them with data-backed intelligence, allowing us to deliver an exceptional level of service, which was ultimately the determining criteria in our selection of the winning participant.”

Chief Executive Officer of BisB, Hassan Jarrar, said, “The BisB Innovation Challenge and tech-focused Fintech Competitions of this nature are imperative for innovation in this day and age, especially considering the upcoming challenges facing the financial industry, both in the wake of COVID-19 and in order to effectively bridge the existent gap we have in the market when it comes to innovative Fintech solutions. We want to create better synergies between FinTechs and Banks, and harness the power of technology and AI to solve real life issues, and encourage cross industry collaboration, in order to offer a transformed customer experience”.  

In line with the Bank’s promise to simplify money matters, the FinTech competition’s objective was to brainstorm big ideas and develop a solution in the form of a mature platform that uses adaptive machine learning and sophisticated AI (Artificial Intelligence) to empower the Bank’s financial advisory unit with advanced data insights to enable them to provide a more personalized banking experience for their clients, especially in the wake of a pandemic that is evolving the banking landscape.  Verofax Fintech rose to the challenge. 

“At BisB, we believe that banking should be less complicated, our priority has always been to simplify lives. We have never stopped innovating or collaborating in the name of simplification, in order to make the world we live in a slightly better place. We’re committed to being a force for change to be reckoned with, disrupting the traditional, and innovating for a better tomorrow,” said the CEO, assured in the opportunity the winning Fintech could present.