Doha, Qatar - May 31, 2022: Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB) received Best Retail Bank in Qatar and Best SME Bank in Qatar at The Asian Banker’s Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards 2022, demonstrating the excellence of its retail and SME offering and the constant development of its services to remain at the forefront of the growing Qatari banking sector.
The awards were announced during a virtual awards ceremony held last week, where QIB was represented by Mr. Vishal Prasad, Head of Retail Product, Mr. Ayman Zein, Head of Alternative Channels, and Mr. Basem Shahrouri Head of Business Banking – SME.
During the virtual awards ceremony, the Asian Banker team praised QIB’s efforts in cementing its stature in the retail banking landscape in Qatar with its solid financial results. QIB continued to strengthen its leadership in the local banking sector in 2021 and continued to be the largest Islamic bank in Qatar. QIB has produced the highest returns in the market in terms of return on equity and return on assets and achieved the best cost to income efficiency ratio in Qatar and the MENA region at 18.1%. The bank deepened its engagement with customers by introducing a new digital cash management solution and rolling out a simplified and user-friendly experience on its award-winning Mobile App which features a smarter and more intuitive user experience (UX) designed to meet the modern needs of its customers.
Commenting on this recognition, Mr. Bassel Gamal, QIB’s Group CEO said: “We are pleased to receive these esteemed awards that signify the continuous achievement of the team’s efforts to develop our retail and SME offerings with new services and solutions to stay at the forefront of the national and regional market.”
In the first quarter of 2022, Net Profit attributable to the Shareholders of QIB amounted to QAR 855 Million representing a growth of 14% over the same period in 2021. Moreover, total assets of the bank increased by 6.8% compared to March 2021 and now stand at QAR 193 Billion driven by the continued growth in the financing and investing activities. Financing assets reached QAR 127 Billion while Customer Deposits now stand at QAR 123 Billion. Total Income for the three months’ period ended 31 March 2022 was QAR 2,117 Million; the Bank was able to further improve it efficiencies bringing down the cost to income ratio to 16.8% for the three months’ period ended 31 March 2022, which is the lowest in the Qatari Banking sector.
The bank works hard to continue to introduce new and innovative features to its award-winning Mobile App with the aim to simplify customers’ digital banking experience and provide greater access to QIB’s products and services from anywhere in the world and at any time. The recent new initiatives include the launch of Qatar’s first digital credit card, the Balance Sneak Peek feature, in addition to the Dark Mode and Segment Mode.
QIB continues to accelerate the digitization of SME financing and launching new products to cater to the banking needs of its corporate customers. As part of its efforts to ease the banking experience for its corporate & SME customers, QIB launched a new online corporate account opening service through its website to digitize the account opening process. In addition, QIB continues to develop its Corporate Internet banking and Corporate Mobile App to enable Corporate & SME customers to access & have full control over their financials.
The Excellence in Retail Financial Services Programme was instituted in 2001 to recognise the pursuit of excellence amongst retail financial institutions in the Asia Pacific. Having expanded to include the Middle East and Africa, the programme is now also a repository of evolving best practices from which players can benchmark their own products and processes over the long-term.
For more information, visit www.qib.com.qa.