5TH Annual Middle East Banking Innovation Summit Concludes Successfully

The two-day Middle East Banking Innovation Summit featuring 20+ presentations, over 30 speakers and more than 450 attendees came to a successful closure on Tuesday. The 5th edition of this summit reiterated its position as the leading platform in the Middle East region for the bankers to engage in idea sharing on trends and technological innovations driving the industry. The summit commenced with premium sponsors Visa, Schneider Electric and IBM welcoming attendees to see the latest developments, develop new business opportunities and discuss pressing industry issues and challenges.

In tandem with the growing trend, Nilanjan Ray of NBAD’s opening address highlighted the growing need for banks and financial institutions to innovate and shared insights on the emerging payments landscape. Taking the discussion further on payments was Paul McCrea of Visa, who took the audience through the company’s strategy in developing innovative products and services. Placing a strong emphasis on innovation, he emphasized on how the payments industry has witnessed an unprecedented change with the introduction of new form factors.

Marcello Baricordi, General Manager UAE and Global Accounts Lead, Visa MENA, added, “Visa envisions a future where connected devices define the way people shop and pay, and that is what we have attempted to create with the connected car proof-of-concept, which was demonstrated at the Summit. In fact, we see a future where consumers can seamlessly make many of their everyday purchases from a ‘connected car’, such as petrol, parking, transit tolls, and drive-through purchases.”

Jonathan Duncan from Schneider Electric spoke on the data center infrastructure management and the benefits banks stand to gain from a connected infrastructure. On the other hand, IBM’s Naveed Minhas highlighted the importance of a digital studio and why banks need to leverage and deliver digital transformation.

The Day 1 panel discussion on Smart Payments Strategy was led by Amru Kotb of Cryptomathic and included inputs from industry experts Noor Bank’s Ehsaan Ahmed, Dubai Islamic Bank’s Dr. Haroun Dharsey and Gary Collins of Westpac Pacific. 

Ziad Youssef, Vice President of ITB, Gulf Countries, Schneider Electric said: “In this digitally-driven age, financial institutions are expected to securely storage critical, sensitive data, be available round the clock, and efficiently leverage IT to deliver quality customer service at the touch of a button. Effective management of complex IT systems is thus a crucial component to the overall functioning of such institutions. To address these needs, Schneider Electric was happy to present our suite of datacenter solutions to the regional banking industry. The Middle East Banking Innovation Summit (MEBIS) 2015 was an excellent platform to highlight our value-add, and share hardware and software innovations which can develop enterprise in a strategic way.” 

Westpac Pacific’s Gary Collins during his session elaborated on the need to innovate and design mass market product and payments in developing markets. Kartik Taneja of Standard Chartered Bank, explained the changing landscape and trends in the payments industry, supported with statistics and two noteworthy case studies on mobile wallets. Sessions on day 1 included speakers from Sestek, Collinson Group, Appello, Intellect Design Arena, CSC, Backbase and Entera as well.

Pedro Cardoso, Head of Multichannel and CRM, Emirates NBD kicked off Day 2 Summit with an extremely interesting session on addressing UAE’s success in digital payments. Apart from sharing remarkable insights on the payments industry in the UAE, he also launched the bank’s first social media banking product at the Summit. Called Social Banking, this service allows Emirates NBD customers to access their account and make transactions using Twitter’s direct mail service.

Mr. Brad Hariharan, Regional Director, Expotrade Middle East, said, “We are thrilled by the response we have received from our sponsors and delegates and would like to extend our heartfelt appreciation for their support. In its fifth year now, the summit has grown tremendously in size and relevance. Over the course of two days, the summit covered pertinent industry topics, addressed emerging trends and provided a platform to showcase innovative offerings and solutions targeted to the banking sector.”

This year’s edition of the summit also featured an Innovation Lounge that provided 40+ sponsors and partners an opportunity to present their technological solutions. Additionally, the summit also offered two days of unrivalled networking opportunities that proved to be extremely valuable to the attendees.

Haadi Raad of Visa, Spinney’s Paresh Buch; Emirates NBD’s R. Sivaram and Sameer Soliman of Network International participated in a panel discussion on how digital payments is displacing cash in the real and virtual world. The panel discussion enabled an in-depth conversation and gave delegates valuable insights on the payments industry.

Day 2 sessions included speakers from Comarch, Infrasoft Technologies, Oberthur Technologies, IMTF group and SAS speaking on boosting customer engagement with wearables and beacons; banking in the digital world; fighting e-commerce fraud; transforming compliance burdens into business benefits with digital onboarding and addressing customer’s unspoken needs. 

The event was appreciated by attendees, with senior delegates commenting favorably at its close. Renee Tannous Loca, Vice President – Strategic Planning, First Gulf Bank, said, “The summit showcased interesting content from great presenters. The panel discussions showed how groups can work together effectively. It has been a fantastic networking experience.”

“A very well-organized and efficiently run event. The summit had a range of informative speakers from a cross-section of banking and technology sectors.” said, Mr. Andrew Baxter, Managing Director – Global Markets e-commerce, NBAD.

Mr. Anand Narayanan, Head – Demand Management and Project Delivery, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank said, “The participation was impressive. It was nice to see an innovation element demonstrated by most of the technology service providers. I look forward to this event next year as well.”

The Summit came to a close with a lucky draw that saw four winners take home exciting prizes ranging from a set of Sennheiser headphones, a priority pass offering access to 700 airport lounges across the word, an iPad and a 2 nights’ stay at Sofitel, Palm Jumeriah, Dubai.