Future Banks Summit 2021-Second Day

The second day of Future Banks Summit 2021 began on November 2nd with a presentation by our honorary chairman Majed AlShodari, Chief Cyber Security Officer at SALAMA Cooperative Insurance Co. (Saudi Arabia), who highlighted the importance of Digital Shared Services and the challenges faced on the path to digitalization. Ahmad Sidawi, Enterprise Accounts Head at Genesys, followed him with a presentation on one of the key factors of digitalization today- serving experience as a service. With a study on the banking sector in KSA, he demonstrated the key trends shaping customer experience.

Grant Niven, Head of Group Digital at Banque Saudi Fransi, and Dr. Ahmed Darwish, Head of Digital Delivery at Bank AlBilad spoke on the Banking Transformation Roadmap and the importance of mastering data and leveraging advanced technologies to meet AI challenges in a first-of-its-kind Fire Side Chat at the summit. As the topic of data and AI was being discussed, cloud computing was not far behind. Dr. Tim N, TISO of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, joined us virtually for the summit to discuss the formation of a Cloud foundation for the New Banking Paradigm and identifying the suitable cloud computing banking model.

Following that, we had Esam AlKheshnam, the CEO of ITS Group, deliver a timely presentation on the post-Covid-19 Banking Paradigm Shift. Modernize corporate processes, digitalize operations to assist decrease paper work, create new customer journeys and user experiences, provide dynamic solutions, and more were among the prominent points he made. As an addition, Sultan Al-Hamidi, Executive Vice President at Social Development Bank, also spoke on rebooting banking for the post-covid-19 era. He discussed the current and potential scenario of Fin-Techs in Saudi Arabia.

The evolution of marketing & customer experience in the post-covid era was a topic Yasmina Fahmy, Group General Manager of Marketing & Digital Transformation at Contact Financial Holding, addressed. As a virtual speaker on the summit, she discussed strategies to build engagement and trust through technology and automation, as well as how extreme customer-centricity is necessary to adapt to the post-pandemic world. Furthermore, our speaker Khaled Nabhan, Head of Customer Experience at Bank Audi EG, who joined us virtually, touched base on listening to the customer and developing Cx skill and knowledge to drive future transformation.

As our final speaker, Fares Antoun, Head of Payments at Bank of Beirut, brought the event to a close as he shared his view on the role Fintech is playing in the future of banking.