Commercial Bank CEO Abdulla Saleh al-Raisi and chief human capital officer Sharoq Ibrahim al-Malki delivered a presentation at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMUQ). The presentation was part of university’s Dean’s Lecture Series.

Titled “Innovation in Banking”, al-Raisi and al-Malki provided the audience with insights on how a wide variety of innovations are shaping the Qatari banking industry today, together with their predictions for the future.

The lecture series is a forum that brings together prominent industry leaders, government officials and business community to give talks and share their expertise on topical issues to faculty, staff, students and members of the wider community.

Ilker Baybars, dean, CMUQ, said: “Connecting our community with industry is an integral part of our commitment to develop capacity through transfer of knowledge in line with Qatar National Vision 2030. We are delighted to invite industry leaders such as Abdullah Saleh al-Raisi to engage with our campus.”

Al-Raisi began by stating that one of Commercial Bank’s goals is to be recognised as the leading bank in Qatar for innovation and quality of service, and innovation forms a large part of the bank’s strategy to attract new and retain existing customers, as well as differentiate itself from competitors.

He drew upon a number of “firsts” Commercial Bank brought to the Qatari market as examples of the bank’s heritage of innovation over its nearly 40-year history. These include introducing the first ATMs in 1990, being the first Qatari bank to list on the London Stock Exchange in 2006 and launching the first Qatari mobile banking app in 2009.

Harnessing technology was a key theme of the presentation, as al-Raisi remarked it was a powerful driving force of innovation in society today and making a big impact across the banking industry. “With remote online banking becoming more and more important to our customers, we must harness changing technology platforms to deliver benefits for our customers.”

He said successful innovation must be based on the application of better ideas or methods that meet new or existing market needs. “Commercial Bank places a huge emphasis on the way we listen to, interact and communicate with our customers, as the customer experience is an important area of innovation for us.”

Al-Raisi also examined other areas of innovation in banking such as the trend towards specialisation and customisation of products and services, looking to new markets, and banks being good corporate
citizens.

He stated that a critical factor in Commercial Bank’s future success is ensuring that customers’ changing needs are met. The way the bank has chosen to meet these needs, both now and in the past, is through innovation.

Meanwhile, al-Malki stressed that the most important driver of innovation is people. “People are the heart of Commercial Bank’s business, and innovation in the way we hire, manage and train our staff is every bit as important as using new technologies.”