NBAD

By Nawal Al Ali

SECTOR 1: GENERAL
BANKING
This report acts as a guide about what I had done through my work in the

bank and also what expertise I had gained so far and the aspects of
development that I am going through within this report. In this concern we
will go deeply within the activities of the bank and identifying the products
and the features and providing a proper description for most of the banking
activities that are rendered at NBAD.

In addition to General Banking in the UAE in general and NBAD in particular

we will also discuss the banking operations through the foreign exchange
market by which it is considered an important aspect that enriches the
profitability within the bank and make things done in the right manner and
all pointing at increasing the profits of the bank.

BANKING IN UAE
The banking sector in the UAE is relatively new where we have banks that

operate before the union in 1971 like NBAD and Dubai National Bank and also
there are some foreign banks that were open before that period as well like HSBC.

When the UAE central bank was founded the operations and licensing of banks

were regulated and we started seeing new conditions for opening banks in the
UAE and things are no longer easy than they were before. The UAE central Bank
had formed many structural reforms agenda by which banks has to commit to
them else they will face some punitive acts. The central bank is concerned with
strengthening the system and in order to achieve them and maintain a strong and
well-balanced banking sector it allowed foreign banks to operate freely in the UAE
in order to create competition in the market and allow the local banks to get more
experienced and in 20 years the results of these actions was clear where the UAE
banks became more professional and many of them started providing operations
outside the UAE.

TRENDS OF THE BANKING INDUSTRY IN

THE UAE
In the UAE the banking industry trends are mostly focusing on consumer

banking as it is considered the main drive for banking revenues in the UAE.
At the end of the 20th century when the country development reach high
rates and during the peaks between 2003 and 2007 the corporate banking
has become very important where the increasing number of companies
and the development of trade relations between the UAE and the outer
world had all resulted in making this banking service more prosperous as
many investors came to the UAE especially to Dubai and many projects
had been done and this required huge financing and banks found this an
opportunity.

SECTOR 2: THE NATIONAL BANK OF ABU

DHABI
The national bank of Abu Dhabi referred as NBAD is a government-owned

bank and a provider and distributor for financial services. It is one of the
leading bank in the country and the region and its stake are totally owned
by the Abu Dhabi Based government. The bank was founded in 1968 in Abu
Dhabi the capital of the United Arab Emirates and throughout years it has
expanded its operations and developed many times. NBAD is becoming
among the strongest bank and it has presence in many other countries like
Oman, India and Singapore and Pakistan.

NBAD OPERATIONS
Operations are very Important in the Banking job because they are the core of

the business. As a branch we seek clients and we do their daily services like
opening and closing accounts, processing applications for loans and credit cards
and other services that are in the core of the consumer banking.

The loans we provide at the bank are mostly personal and auto-loans and

sometimes we offer housing loans because we are working in an area classified

as freehold and many people would like to come and invest in buying
apartments. In the branch we care for two main things where the first is
satisfying the financial needs of our clients and at the same time to be able to
keep in balance with the regulations of the central bank.

We care for our clients and for that purpose we work on making the work at the

bank done in proper way and without any delay and we have set a target in the
branch that does not exceed 10 minutes for finalizing an application in order to
be able to service as many clients as we can during one day.

CONSUMER BANKING
In order to achieve what we are aiming for we may first consider consumer banking

as a whole in identifying what it is and its sections and how it is made before we tend
to state the main comparison in the discussion by which we are considering a
comparison based on quantitative figures and in this concern we may make the
comparison set in a scientific way rather than in informative way.
In order to reach the result that we aim for we may first consider what are the

services provided and their share of revenue of banks, the customer satisfaction
towards these services in the UAE vs the globe, the availability of providing
qualitative products in both level and we will start with a review for the fact of
consumer banking in the UAE and then will state a fact for the consumer banking on
global level; and these will be made in two separate parts in this discussion; the third
part which is the most important part will be restricted to the comparison between
consumer banking in the UAE and in the globe and in the conclusion we will list the
results that we had achieved within this discussion.

ANALYSIS FOR UAE CONSUMER

BANKING
Through the above we have understood that certain circumstances had

played an important role in making the consumer banking prosperous in

the UAE where each person has his/her reasons to apply for loans and also
they may need to get these loans. The expectations for auto loans and
personal loans are very high when we compare them to the housing loans
and for many reasons. The housing loans are very risky where if the client
defaults the bank may get his money back but it is not easy to find another
buyer for the property especially these days where the sector is suffering
weakness and even if they find buyers the prices of sales of properties are
trending down unlike the prices of rental that are going up and this is why
we started to witness some UAE based Banks like Dubai Islamic Bank DIB,
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank ADCB and other banks become having their
own real estate companies in order to rent the properties they own
because they found that rental of these properties is less risky and more
profitable than the resale of the properties.

COMPARISON UAE VS THE

GLOBE
In concept it is easy to make comparison between a sector in one country

and the same sector in another company but here in this situation we are
making comparison for consumer banking in the UAE and consumer
banking in the Globe. From this we cannot retrieve a real idea because we
are not in a situation that enable us to tell which is better the consumer
banking in the UAE or the consumer Banking in the globe.
In this concern we are going to consider the consumer banking in the globe

as an index and then we will make the comparison to retrieve whether the
consumer banking in the UAE is strong or not.
The comparison will be based on qualitative and quantitative variables

where we will first list the qualitative variables and then the quantitative
ones.

ANALYSIS FOR FINDINGS

When making a comparison we need to note that there is nothing perfect and that when a certain

country is excelled in something then it doesnt mean that it is in everything. When we take all
the indicators we can see that the consumer banking in the UAE is higher than the global rates in
many indices and it is less in some of them.
In overall analysis we can retrieve that the consumer banking in the UAE is superior to the global

index but it is still need more development because if we see the top ten countries in this field
topped by Canada and the UAE is not among them and since the banks in the UAE must make
more efforts in this concern.
this discussion has been an assigned attempt to consider a comparison in consuming banking

between the UAE and the globe. We started in reviewing the facts about consumer banking in the
UAE then we analyzed them because they are the main input in our discussion and also the main
output will be around it since this discussion aims to see how it can harmonize with global levels.
Next, we did a review about the global consumer banking and the facts about it in order to see

what it provides and start to retrieve some features that are different and can form a start point
for the comparison.

CONTINUE
The third part which is the most important part is the comparison; the core of our

discussion where through it we started by stating the qualitative comparison in terms of

the features of the services and their kinds and then we followed it with the quantitative
comparison where we had seen many differences in terms of many indicators related to
consumer banking.
The results obtained had shown that the UAE has higher rates than average global rates

but also we found that the UAE has to make more efforts in some rates where in terms of
Customer Experience Indicators it is recommended that the banks in the UAE has to
revise their customer experience and apply more features that enrich this in order to
become higher than global rates and also the digital capabilities at consumer banking are
recommended to be promoted to become in fashionistas stage and the whole banking
system has to apply developments that enable the UAE banking sector as a whole and
not only consumer banking to become among the best in the world in terms of banking
services and to make the banking sector among the top ten sectors on global level.

WHAT I LEARNED?
My report is based on dual basis where the first one is informative and the

second one is practical. In the informative part and through the research I
had done I found that there are many aspects for banking where I learned
what is banking and had a brief about its history and also about the core
business of the bank through identifying the deposits of the clients and
resell them to other clients or invest them in other markets. I also learned
about the history of banking and when it started and more important is
that I learned about the banking sector in the UAE in addition to the
classification of banks within the UAE and the vital role which is played by
the central bank as well and the core different that exists between Islamic
and conventional banks for all my career is taking place at NBAD which is a
conventional bank as I had never been exposed to working in an Islamic
Bank before.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

It is clear that my report focused on consumer banking more than corporate banking and I consider this natural because the

branch that I manage mainly focuses on consumer banking and that is how things are done within this report.
Through the report I intended to achieve two things where the first one is gaining knowledge about banking in general and the

second thing is acquiring experience in the operations and activities that took place at NBAD motor city branch.
My knowledge has been widely enhanced since in contributed to banking from the base of the pyramid to its top and from the

general to the most particular as I started with the banking in general through its history and facts and its methods then
considered banking in the UAE and through banking in the UAE I accessed information about the National Bank of Abu Dhabi and I
finished with the activities and operations that are taking place in the Motor City Branch and became able to demonstrate an
integrative banking report which includes theory and practice at the same time as an attempt to demonstrate everything that I
had learned through my career and my studies.
I also widened my knowledge about consumer banking because I consider that it is one of the most important revenue generating

tasks in banking and it is the most common activity in the UAE and here I had the desire to retrieve the prospects of the consumer
banking in the UAE and compare it with its relevant international rival and I found that the UAE has a strong combination of
services and quality provided to the clients in the market and that such thing would definitely assist in making the sector in the
UAE become stronger and much better because we have seen that the situation in the UAE needs a little push up to reach the
levels that are desired and that are enough to put the UAE banking sector on the map of the international consumer banking sector
in particular and I believe that the UAE banks in general and more particularly NBAD has to go global because the markets are
promising and there are many investment opportunities in addition to gaining expertise.
At the end of the report there are many recommendations that I want to provide to the banking sector in the UAE, to the NBAD

management and to myself.

CONTINUE
First, to the banking sector in the UAE by which I had discovered that it is very strong and

especially the consumer banking sector where we see that many foreign banks are coming to
invest in the UAE because the find opportunities in the market and we also need to do this where
most of the UAE banks outside are either shared capitals with other banks or are at most
representative banks and I suggest that there are wide broads for UAE banks to extend their
operations outside especially in the country that do not impose a percentage of local ownership on
foreign banks.
Second, for NBAD; I will first repeat what I stated above by which the bank has to go global and at

the same time it has to become more international where it is ranked as one of the best 50 banks
in the world but its international presence compared to its ranking is very weak where we see
many banks that are having lesser ranking but they are having better presence in foreign markets.
Third; for myself; I would like to recommend repeating this experience from time to time and to

work closer to my staff because first it will improve my relationship with them and second it will
keep my memory refreshed and also will make my information updated and such thing is very
important for me.

REFERENCES
Capgemini 2013; World Retail Banking Discussion retrieved from

www.forrester.com; retrieved on 12-03-2016

Citi Bank; 2015; Global Consumer Business Discussion; Retrieved from

http://www.citigroup.com/citi/about/consumer_businesses.html; retrieved
on 12-03-2016

AG Discussioner;2015; Top 2015 Retail Banking Trends in the UAE;

http://www.arabiangazette.com/top-uae-retail-banking-trends-20150204/
February 4; 2015; retrieved on 12-03-2016

Global Finance, NBAD among the best 5o banks in world. (mellahi,

2010)Page 67 & 68

Thank you for

Listening