International
Al Rajhi Bank (ARB) is the world’s largest provider of Islamic Finance. It saw a strategic opportunity to capitalise on the growing Micro and Small Business (MSB) market in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). More than 90% of KSA’s businesses are small and medium enterprises, but they receive less than 20% of the available funding. A pressing ambition of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 strategy is to improve support for such businesses – mostly small, underfunded firms – to promote modernisation, and advance the Kingdom’s economy.
This was an ambition shared by ARB, and one they hoped to capitalise on through expansion of their financing product portfolio. With 900,000 potential customers, ARB wanted to leverage innovative new digital channels to help MSBs access financing to achieve their full potential – championing Vision 2030 and its ambitions to nurture growth and increase citizens’ quality of life.
PwC supported the bank to make its vision a reality, by utilising its transformation expertise and knowledge of financial markets, to design, implement, test, and go live with the digital banking solution – delivering two separate platform solutions for each of their products, to cover off in-person branch and self-serve digital experiences. Subsequently, PwC helped define the strategic roadmap for rolling out the solutions across the nation’s various branches, to facilitate a rapid uptake of the app by MSB customers, whilst still being considerate of the bank’s employees and change management processes.
Differentiated offerings allowed ARB to disrupt the MSB segment through innovative products and services. Not only did the bank benefit from improving their existing technology stack and increasing their product offering in their marketplace, the bank’s customers were also able to benefit from diversified methods of accessing ARB products and an enhanced experience overall, supported through the new technology.
Given the scale and complexity of ARB’s challenge, PwC deployed a highly experienced 25+ strong core team with blended expertise from the UK and Middle East, with vast experience across areas including customer experience strategy, product development, digital channel design, agile delivery and project management, banking and origination platforms, and large-scale technology implementation.
A programme highlight was spearheading new ways of working, by bringing female colleagues into managerial positions to drive and lead key deliverables – a first for the bank. This empowered our teams to thrive in an inclusive environment, and the client was able to benefit from the deep digital knowledge and expertise PwC’s people brought, and the unique synergy realised through having multi-gendered, multi-ethnic, multicultural teams.
PwC’s work surpassed the expectations of the client, its technology vendors and MSB customers. The firm launched four new products within just six months, hitting all milestones and delivering the remaining three products by the end of the engagement.
With the immense success of the programme and the strong professional relationships developed, ARB has asked PwC to lead on further engagements, including the data migration for its overall loan portfolio, and supporting with the sales activation of the new MSB finance products.
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