Innovation Changing the Face of Banking: Commercial Bank Media Roundtable
22 February 2021
Doha, Qatar: Shedding light on its digital transformation and banking innovation, Commercial Bank, the leading digital bank in Qatar, held a virtual roundtable discussion on Thursday, February 18th, and welcomed local media representatives to discuss the Bank's digital market leadership.
Amit Sah, EGM – Head of Retail Banking, Roya Khajeh, AGM – Head of Cards and Payments, and Martin Andrew Leong, AGM – Retail and Consumer Banking, discussed at length Commercial Bank's digital strategy, customers' response, and the overall transformation achieved. The debate tackled two main aspects of innovation and how they improved the lives of customers, specifically innovation in transactional banking and in client relationships.
Though Commercial Bank has always strived to stay ahead of the curve in digital innovation, COVID-19 has accelerated its momentum and has changed the scope of how people bank and use digital services.
Highlighting the innovative approach of the Bank in transactional banking, the three speakers took media representatives on a quick tour around CB's latest payment options which touch almost every aspect of customers' lives, such as: Tap N' Pay, remote mobile payment using CB Pay for Merchants, QR code payment, and many more.
Commenting on Commercial Bank's digital leadership, Amit Sah emphasized on the Bank's major role in setting new trends in the market, to the extent that the whole market keeps on adapting to the innovative products CB launches.
“Our focus has been on creativity and innovation, driven by enhanced value for customers. This has helped adoption rates grow dramatically. It is today entirely possible for customers to complete all their banking engagements, be it simple or complex, through digital mediums, at a time and place of their convenience," said Sah.
Answering an important question about Commercial Bank's cybersecurity standards, Sah stated: “The safety of our customers' data is paramount. We are constantly upgrading our cyber security and fraud detection capabilities and will continue to do so at all times."
Roya Khajeh stated that “while technology used to be considered as complementary, it has become now an integral part of every customer's banking system." Supporting her statement, Khajeh commented on the large success the CB contactless ecosystem has achieved, “the Bank handles over 2 million contactless taps every month."
Discussing the innovation of customer relationships, Martin Leong explained how Commercial Bank, like many global Banks, is expected to offer a digital banking service that is safe, secure, reliable. He added, “technology is not our primary focus, it is always our customers. We simply use technology to make our customers' lives easier in both transactional banking as well as more complex financial needs such as wealth planning, personal borrowing and international share trading."
The panel of journalists were also keen to find out more about the plans the Bank had for branches. Sah explained how branches are still an integral part of the Bank's focus on customers and confirmed that there would be no decrease in the number of branches. In fact, a slight increase as the Bank reshaped the layouts, designs, locations of branches, to suit the needs of the customers.
What was apparent in this very frank discussion, was the single-minded vision of the Bank to excel in customer experience and how the Bank uses technology to fulfill this vision. We are certain there are more exciting developments still to come as the Commercial Bank team pushes the boundaries of excellence, in a digital, yet very personal way.
Ends.