At CIB, digital thinking is deeply integrated into the organization. This focus goes beyond service channels and transaction processing, extending from product development to risk management and human capital management. Big data has become vital as we build information-gathering and analysis structures and turn our quantitative knowledge into building blocks for future strategies. It is these building blocks that CIB believes has formed the foundation of an entirely distinct business line: Digital Banking.
The four pillars of CIB’s digital business plan are improving the customers’ experience, increasing migration and automation ratios, optimizing costs, and generating revenue. These are handled through two core groups: the Analytics and Data Management division (ADM) and the Global Transaction and Digital Banking Group, each of which has its own individual segments, directives, and strategies to achieve these goals.
Analytics and Data Management Division
Under the purview of the Chief Data Officer (CDO), CIB’s Analytics and Data Management (ADM) teams have cemented their position as the ultimate source of analytical data and strategic analysis for the Bank’s various functions. With specialized teams focused on each business line, the team can ensure that required analysis is available. Supported by the work and neutrality of ADM, the Board and management can take effective decisions affecting all aspects of the business, from currency mix to product mix, profitability or expenses.
2021 Highlights
In 2021, the CDO area’s focus continued to be the improvement and enhancement of business processes, especially in the wake of the negative impacts of COVID-19. As such, the ADM team focused on enhancing bottom line profitability and improving the customers’ experience. Through its Data Governance team, the CDO area has unremittingly worked to ensure compliance with regulatory authority mandated principals and regulations. The Data Governance team has been central to the bank’s pioneering work to verify and organize the Know Your Customer (KYC) data, an infamously difficult task among all Egyptian financial institutions. CIB has been the first, if not the only, bank to tackle this issue using the Data Governance Team, which has been yielding extraordinary results since their involvement.
In 2021, the department continued to garner acclaim for its cutting-edge work, having been named The Banker’s 2021 Innovation in Digital Banking Award winner. The department was recognized for two CDO-led projects: the Personal Financial Advisor initiative and the Branch Network Optimization tool. Thanks to the efforts of the Data Warehouse team, CIB also became the first Bank in the world to be awarded the CMMI-DEV V2.0 Maturity Level 3. The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a certification recognizing excellence in software development and integration. The CMMI model and institute were developed at Carnegie Melon University and are globally recognized trademarks of excellence.
Customer-Centric Projects
In 2021, the CDO area’s various teams showed their commitment to developing innovative technologies to enhance customer relationships. Projects such as our in-house, data-driven, machine learning, financial literacy program reflect our dedication to ensuring customer satisfaction and retention. By providing clients with banking and general financial tips related to their activity in choosing the correct products for them ensures customer satisfaction and optimal profitability. This model ensures that customers are getting the most out of their banking experience and encourages them to be repeat customers with us seeing that CIB cares about the best interest of its customers. Similarly, the Data Science team recently developed a product recommendation engine. It works by collecting all relevant financial and non-financial data, analyzing it through a machine learning algorithm, and recommending products to clients based on their activity history. These initiatives, along with many other customer insight projects, work to better our understanding and characterization of various client needs, allowing us to serve our customers more prudently and effectively, to provide the concerned areas with the data-backed knowledge of what our clients need and how to cater to said needs.
Operational Enhancement
The CDO area also remains committed to supporting operations, and in 2021, it created a branch location optimization tool to this effect. The tool analyzes customer demand, geographical data, and economic and strategic requirements to produce recommendations for optimal branch locations with favorable profit and consumer reach projections. Additionally, the ADM team automated the cash management algorithms it created in 2020. When tested, the algorithm proved to be a great success in reducing cash-in-transit and its associated costs. The ADM team has also been working to support the Bank in its mission to bolster its SME portfolio by developing alternative scoring models and alternative segmentation strategies, two models that should enable the business side to better spot potential customers in this unchartered segment.
Decision Making Support
The Business Analytics team provides monthly analysis tailored to division heads, senior management and board members on issues facing the Bank on a MOM basis, while also making reconciliatory suggestions and solutions. The EPM team supports this by providing monthly reports on profitability and account activities. Additionally, the Business Analytics team is developing a Premium Segments Strategy Portal that would make room for different segmentation methods for Premium retail segments to maximize customer engagement, satisfaction, and profitability.
Global Transaction and Digital Banking Group
Our commitment to investing in our people, skill base, and technological infrastructure over several years has positioned us well to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19, allowing us to continue driving digital transformation. Ultimately, the success of CIB’s digital transformation efforts come from putting the customers’ needs at the heart of product, service development, and innovation across the Bank. The Global Transactional and Digital Banking division advocates for the customer during all process redesigns, digital upgrades, and enhancements, helping to translate an understanding of customer needs into clear system requirements, ultimately improving the customer experience.
Several services have been extended to the Bank’s support functions, resulting in notable gains. Awareness visits conducted for relationship managers and branch staff improved customer service by enhancing their knowledge of our digital products. Business reengineering to adopt straight-through processing (STP), including process automation and increased efficiency, has reduced the workload for CIB staff. These, and other initiatives to digitalize internal departments, helped eliminate manual work and automate daily payment processing.
Global Transactional and Digital Banking has worked to embed flexible and secured digital capabilities across our operations. We also aim to optimize operations on the back end, streamlining workflow to cut transaction processing times and costs, as well as strengthening security and compliance procedures.
Agile Cultural Transformation
Recognizing new technological disruptions in the banking industry, as well as changing customer expectations, CIB has adopted an adaptive approach to mitigating market changes by enabling agile delivery within selected core areas. To achieve maximum flexibility, the teams utilize a trial-and-error framework, allowing us to reassess initial approaches and move forward with high quality value propositions and stronger relationships with our customers and shareholders alike. With an innovative, consumer-focused, and technologically robust operational strategy, CIB is enacting a culture of agility and responsiveness
Customers come first: We will push forward with our customer-centric approach based on integrity, agility, and flexibility, swiftly responding to customers’ evolving needs and expectations, overcoming difficulties, and offering suitable products and services to help our clients achieve their goals.
Thinking big: :We continue to grow and improve, striving for excellence to create unparalleled customer experiences and solutions that exceed expectations using more agile and timely solutions.
We are one team: : Our employees are our most important asset. Responsibilities and growth are shared to accomplish goals and deliver the best results. We are adopting a new, agile methodology to break down silos between departments.
Center of excellence: CIB seeks to transform the entire operating processes via intelligent automation with digital technological advantages, unlocking a new value proposition through agile methodologies. This includes raising agility awareness to support learning by doing. CIB is also leveraging technological advancements to accelerate the introduction of products and services through agile delivery.
Main Areas of Focus
- Maximizing transactional banking revenues and creating new revenue streams.
- Driving and increasing the cost synergy generated from various digital products and channels.
- Generating efficiencies and reducing service costs.
- Providing new channels and features for customer acquisition.
- Creating new touch points for existing CIB customers.
- Increasing migration and automation ratios.
- Creating new revenue streams.
- Enhancing the customer experience and integrating channels seamlessly.
- Driving product and service innovation.
- Re-engineering various operational processes to reduce turnaround time (TAT) and increase efficiency.
The Group is divided into the following divisions:
Global Transaction Banking (GTB): The GTB division offers a comprehensive suite of value-added, integrated, and innovative transactional products and services to corporate and business banking customers, including:
- Cash management products
- Trade finance management products
- Governmental payments products
- Supply chain finance products
- GTB business development
- Global securities services products
Digital Banking Channels: The Digital Banking Channels division develops and promotes digital services for consumer banking. It monitors and analyzes the performance of these channels and platforms in terms of traffic, segments, products, and services to maximize product penetration and increase CIB’s share of the customer’s ‘wallet’. The division focuses on five core areas:
- Consumer digital business development
- Online banking channels (Internet and mobile banking)
- IVR, chatbot, and contact center channels
- ATMs and self-service channels
- Digital transformation
Digital Banking Governance and Support: The Digital Banking Governance and Support division is dedicated to managing collaboration and ensuring compliance among all group divisions, the Bank’s internal stakeholders, the regulator, and other external stakeholders.
Digital Banking Channels 2021 Highlights
Digital Transformation
At the end of 2020, CIB launched Bank of the Future (BOTF), a program that replicates the physical branch experience and redirects customer traffic toward our growing digital channels. Using robotics and operations centralization systems to increase efficiency and minimize service costs, the Bank of the Future program will help establish CIB’s digital platforms as the primary channels for serving customers.
2021 witnessed the inauguration of the branch digital transformation program, whereby frontline sales representatives were mandated to register and tutor customers in using the new online banking channel. Close communication with our network of branches, as well as strong reporting mechanisms, provided insightful analytics, helping us monitor branch performance and assess the success of the program.
The six key pillars of BOTF are Service Digitalization, Operations Centralization, Robotics, Branch Digital Experience, Branch classification, and Digital Sales. Below is a summary of the mega progress of some of the pillars during 2021:
Service Digitalization: We were able to migrate many of our service offerings to digital channels, allowing for greater usage of online services. The impact of BOTF phase 1 continues this upward trajectory, particularly in regards to the internal and external fund transfers migration rates, penetration rates, cost synergy, transaction volume, and transaction value of online banking.
| Scale | YTD Sep 2020
(Before Launch of BOTF) |
YTD Dec 2021 | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Internal Transfers Migration Rate |
80% |
89% |
11% |
|
External Transfers Migration Rate |
55% |
81% |
47% |
|
Online Banking Penetration Rate |
48% |
63% |
31% |
|
Online Banking Cost Synergy |
EGP 651 mn |
EGP 1,580 mn |
143% |
|
Online Banking Transactions Volume |
3.7 mn |
9.4 mn |
154% |
|
Online Banking Transactions Value |
EGP 63.1 mn |
EGP 194.3 bn |
208% |
Robotics:
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) played a significant role in productivity enhancement, saving time, effort, and cost. In 2021, CIB automated processes using RPA technology and enrolled eight digital employees to work within the CIB ecosystem. This had a positive impact on the business, saving more time to focus on improving customer engagement, innovation, and accelerating transformation within the business activities. Among the benefits, the digital employees made marked progress on the Bank’s operations and resources in 2021, whereby:
The average monthly volume for cases processed by RPA recorded 64,000 transactions.
The average handling time for the transactions was optimized by 70% to be 956 hours, down from 3,131 hours prior to automation.
Digital Sales:
The program worked on adding new revenue streams through the online banking channel by availing CDs/ TDs booking requests as investment tools. This will increase new-to-bank onboarding rates, position our online platform as an effective digital sales channel, reduce branch traffic, and improve customer satisfaction and convenience. The average monthly value of digital bookings surpassed EGP 1 billion, boosting total CDs/TDs booking volume and value to 39,200 transactions and EGP 10.4 billion, respectively, as of December 2021.
Online Banking (Internet and Mobile Banking)
The COVID-19 pandemic made online banking mediums primary channels for our customers, with a significant increase in usage and penetration rates. Now, almost 63% of the Bank’s customer base uses online banking, with internet banking transactions up 22% y-o-y to 2.2 million transactions worth EGP 58.1 billion, a 46% y-o-y hike. The online customer base reached 1 million users, up 30% y-o-y with an activity rate of 66% as of December 2021. Mobile banking transactions were up 107% y-o-y to 7.3 million transactions worth EGP 136.3 billion, a 159% y-o-y hike. It is of note that CIB creates new KPIs to monitor and measure the effectiveness of digital sales, such as “New to Term” of CD/TD, which measures the percentage of new customers who joined a bank product/service for the first time. On the other hand, opening an additional account via online banking also witnessed significant progress, while 4,000 monthly traffic came from Online banking for credit card and loan requests.
In 2021, we focused on enhancing our Online Banking channels by improving customers’ experience through adding more features and banking activities that can be conducted online instead of branch visits, widening the variety of available products and services to our customers that can be used anytime and anywhere, such as:
Easing the registration process to Online Banking. Customers can now register to Online Banking channels by account number, National ID, and passport number, in addition to the debit/credit card number, giving them the ability to register on the spot once they open an account without having to wait for card issuance to complete the registration process.
Availing and working on the digital sales. We have availed booking CDs and TDs as investment tools through Online Banking channels, resulting in an average monthly value of bookings that has surpassed 1 billion on online channels.
Enabling opening additional accounts through Online Banking, resulting in an average of 4,200 new opened accounts monthly.
Offering new offline requests that customers can submit through online channels without the need to visit the branch or contact the call center (e-statement enrollment, replacing debit and credit cards, applying for a loan and a credit card, opening and managing Smart Wallet, and managing credit card direct debit account).
Capitalizing on the successful launch of CD and TD online booking, we took concrete steps toward providing mutual fund services, adding new revenue streams to the Bank’s distribution channels. In the year to come, we plan to continue to offer unique banking services through our online banking channels to increase NTB onboarding rates, position our online platform as an effective digital sales channel, boost assets and liabilities products, reduce branch traffic, and improve customer satisfaction and convenience.
CIB Chatbot
Zaki the Bot, which was launched in December 2019, conducted over 482,000 interactions in 2021 with a 16% y-o-y growth on both the public website and Facebook Messenger in English, Arabic, and colloquial Arabic. The feature has offloaded the social media team by over 61%. 2022 will see not only new features added to the bot’s value proposition but also the introduction of Zaki on WhatsApp, pending regulatory approval, integrated with seamless live chat to serve new corporate and business banking segments.
Phone Banking (IVR and Contact Center)
CIB’s phone banking adds value to customers by giving them personalized advice and offering digital solutions that let them bank more quickly and efficiently wherever they are. In 2021, calls to IVR and the contact center grew 28% y-o-y to 1 million monthly calls. We changed the IVR top-level menu to make sure our customers identify themselves before reaching an agent, leading IVR resolve rate to reach 56% in 2021 vs. 49% in 2020. In 2021, IVR new subscribers doubled y-o-y to 893 thousand customers, making IVR our primary voice channel, while cost synergy increased 92% y-o-y to EGP 67.5 million.
In the year ahead, we plan to revamp the IVR UX to introduce a tailored experience to our customers based on their personas, banking behavior, and the products they have. The new experience will shorten the service time, reduce channel utilization/cost, and enhance customer’s navigation experience. Plans are underway to transform the call center into a contact center to support new channels (live chat) and identify customer personas and behaviors, aiding in customer migration to the best-fit channel. RPA is being assessed to automate the contact center operations and, accordingly, optimize agent’s productivity and operating cost.
ATM Network
CIB’s ATM network grew 15% y-o-y to 1,284 ATMs, making it the largest ATM network among private banks. The network handled over 71.7 million transactions (up 17% y-o-y) worth EGP 124.6 billion (up 30% y-o-y). Average monthly dispensed cash exceeded EGP 8.1 billion, while average monthly deposits reached EGP 2.4 billion. The migration ratio from branches to ATMs was 96.3% for eligible migratable cash deposit transactions and 99% for withdrawal transactions, saving EGP 1.6 billion (up 10% y-o-y) and hiking revenues from the network 72% y-o-y to EGP 50.1 million.
In line with the Bank’s push to support financial inclusion regulatory goals and meet global benchmarks for ATM penetration, we worked toward the CBE initiative by installing an additional 180 ATMs across the country by June 2021. We also upgraded over 650 ATMs to become Talking ATMs, in line with our efforts to offer our services inclusively to those with visual disabilities
A new, modern ATM user interface (CX Banking) is now live at over 330 machines with plans to roll it out to the entire network of machines, in addition to new functionalities, such as IBAN transfers. The new interface enhances the customer experience and introduces a new tablet view modernizing the ATM interface. We also launched our new flagship drivethru ATM located at two strategic locations.
In the year ahead, we will continue to expand the ATM network and roll out the CX Banking interface to modernize and upgrade the fleet in line with global standards.
Global Transaction Banking (GTB) 2021 Highlights
Cash Management Products
CIB provides integrated cash management products and services backed by web-based cash and treasury management solutions, from account information to state-of-the-art liquidity management solutions. The product offering includes several unique and innovative payments and payables products, collections and receivables products, and standard/tailored information reporting delivered via a variety of digital solutions.
2021 saw a notable increase in transactions, generating significant synergies for cash management, which increased 33% y-o-y to EGP 888 million. International remittances witnessed significant improvements on a y-o-y basis, up 85% to 325,000 transactions worth EGP 4.6 billion, up 83% y-o-y. Total foreign currency increased 83% to USD 300 million.
During the year, we digitalized the functions of microfinance institutions and generally enhanced all digital corporate banking platforms to improve the user experience. This included mobile wallet charging during weekends, instant credit transfers between CIB accounts, debiting Meeza cards daily over ACH direct debit platform, making USD transactions available over the ACH platform, and UI/UX enhancements for a seamless customer experience. We also established a digital solution allowing secure two-way electronic file and data transfers between the Bank and its corporate and financial institution customers supporting STP, near-STP, and high-volume payment processing.
In 2022, CIB intends to focus on building and enhancing the capabilities of current products and digital solutions, as well as the payment infrastructure, by improving speed and agility through the initiation and phase deployment of the payment hub and API Gateway, improving after sales solution delivery, and accelerating process automation.
Below are some of key areas of focus in 2022:
Payment Transformation:
The aim of our payment transformation strategy is to embrace a proactive approach to deliver the best outcome for our customers while supporting payment providers who wish to compete and flourish within our highly competitive market. We will reassess our payments ecosystem, simplify it, enable speed to market, build scalability, flexibility, and agility to meet the growing demands of our customers for seamless payment experiences across all our channels and customer segments. Ultimately, we aim to build a unified and centralized payment infrastructure delivering a highly flexible, universal payment transaction service.
Bank-As-A-Service:
CIB will strive to extend its services to other banks and financial Institutions, initiating the journey of transforming our operating units into revenue generating hubs by catering to smaller banks and other financial institutions.
Product Enrichment:
CIB will continue to develop competitive products and feature rich digital solutions and propositions to stay ahead of the competition and broaden appeal to new segments.
Technology, Process, Service, and Cost Optimization:
We will expand on our automation of processes, aiming to directly impact customer loyalty and hence increase revenues while lowering cost to serve.
Trade Finance Management Products
The Trade Finance Management platform offers corporate customers the ability to conduct and manage their trade finance transactions online. It provides customers transparent and clear information about their transactions, while eliminating paperwork and saving them time and money.
In 2021, we reengineered and enhanced the online transaction processes to accelerate delivery and increase customer satisfaction by revamping the trade finance core system. We created a trade finance endto-end cycle to be presented to our prime corporate customers. The new service enables customers to send matured incoming documentary for collection payment instructions through the SWIFT system.
In the year ahead, we plan to develop the trade finance transformation enhancement program to add additional integration capabilities to the current platform to increase operational efficiency, reduce transactions timing, and increase productivity. It will also significantly improve the customer experience and position CIB as the preferred trade service bank in Egypt. We will also improve transaction processing TAT leveraging automation and new technologies and significantly reduce manual intervention and increase revenues and cost synergies.
Governmental Payment Products
With CIB’s continued support of the government’s efforts to automate governmental payments, we maintain a close partnership with E-Finance Company. The company develops and operates governmental e-payment platforms and channels to enable customs, tax, and other government authorities to receive and collect payments through the E-Pay platform and Corporate Payment Services (CPS) platform, which greatly improves the customer experience.
This year, CIB was first in the Egyptian market in governmental e-payment transactions over the CPS platform. CPS transactions increased 104% y-o-y in volume to 120,000 and 54% y-o-y in value to EGP 23.4 billion. We saw a 69% y-o-y increase in the CPS customer base to 3,000 corporate customers, a 35% y-o-y increase in transaction migration rate to 47%, and an 89% y-o-y increase in synergies to EGP 9.8 million.
A key objective for 2022 is to ease the burden of government payments on CIB branches by enrolling corporate customers to CPS. We also plan to add other payment types over governmental platforms to ensure customer satisfaction and increase our market share.
Supply Chain Finance
Supply Chain Finance is an effective way for corporate customers to improve their working capital position, drive EBITDA improvement, and strengthen supplier relationships. SCF provides suppliers with access to financing leveraging the buyer’s stronger credit rating. It provides short-term credit, which can optimize cash flow by allowing buyers to lengthen their payment terms while providing suppliers with the option to receive payments earlier.
CIB is the first bank in Egypt to bring this kind of supply chain finance product offering to the Egyptian market, a testament to our solid position as an innovator.
During the year, the CIB SCF model won the Middle East and Africa Innovation Awards 2021 for the best supplier financing initiative and best financial supply chain initiative. We officially launched the electronic supply chain finance (e-SCF) module for CIB Business Online and managed to hike the SCF portfolio (loans booking) by 256% y-o-y to EGP 245 million. We also enhanced SCF’s TAT on both the Bank and customer sides by revisiting the end-toend process, enabling STP for invoice eligibility, enabling new extensions to facilitate the process of accepting uploading bulk documents.
The year ahead will see the division introduce more SCF programs, techniques, and workflows to become compatible with different types of credit approvals. We also plan to expand the NTB customer base and target new segments while making technical enhancements over the SCF platform to ensure customer satisfaction.
GTB Business Development
The GTB Business Development team provides the most comprehensive GTB digital solutions for corporate customers’ daily banking needs, providing best-in-class digital financial solutions and consultancy and acting as the main stakeholder in developing corporate business needs. For these efforts, CIB is the top bank in electronic governmental payments.
During the year, we enabled different lines of business to exceed their GTB KPIs for all corporate digital products. We also worked on comprehensive GTB bundled pricing solutions and attracting new business opportunities, such as deposits, trade contingents, assets, digital migration rates, and increased NII.
In the year to come, we plan to apply multiple product pricing bundles to attract new corporate and business banking segments, as well as industry segmentation, to provide competitive pricing that best suit the industry. We plan to improve collaboration with relationship managers and enhance our digital campaigns. At the same time, we will enter new segments and industries while enhancing utilization of our GTB products and platforms. We also plan to offload the operations team by automating manual processes and strengthen our digital transformation strategy.
Global Securities Services
The Global Securities Services division is responsible for marketing, developing custody services, and enhancing CIB market share with targeted customers, including institutions and high-networth individuals. Services include equities, treasury bonds, treasury bills, securitization, global deposit receipts, and Eurobonds.
This year, CIB Custody was ranked first in the Egyptian market in the number of securitization SPVs launched in 2021, with a total of 11 SPVs amounting to EGP 10.3 billion. The division successfully attracted new portfolios amounting to EGP 13.5 billion, up 12% y-o-y. Assets under custody increased 7% y-o-y to a new record of EGP 502 billion, while fixed-income instruments increased 6.4% y-o-y to EGP 236 billion. At the end of the year, the number of customers increased 7% y-o-y to 31,100 customers.
In the year ahead, we plan to expand into new segments, such as securitization and margin lending, to allow clients to optimize their portfolios.
Digital Banking Governance and Support 2021 Highlights
The Digital Banking Governance and Support team is dedicated to managing collaboration among digital channels teams, the Bank’s internal stakeholders, the regulator, and other external stakeholders.
In 2021, the Digital Banking Governance division played a vital role in governing, managing, and coordinating different regulations issued by the regulator across GTB and digital banking channels, in addition to financial inclusion products, with the products owners and the Bank’s internal stakeholders, to guarantee full alignment among all engaged parties. The team also closely monitored the KPIs and deliverables of all digital channels to evaluate the overall performance, highlighting the slow momentum in some KPIs to take corrective action.
The team will continue to ensure compliance across the Bank’s digital products and channels in the coming year and challenge stakeholders to adopt new technologies while ensuring that digital products, strategies, and financial inclusion efforts comply with regulatory guidelines. We will also continue to pivot our strategy in line with updates to financial inclusion laws and initiatives issued by the government and CBE.