Powered by Bank ABC, ila Bank is an innovative digital mobile-only bank designed to offer customer-centric solutions and disrupt the regional retail banking landscape

The Central Bank of Bahrain had established a dedicated Fintech & Innovation Unit as part of its ongoing initiatives towards the financial digital transformation of Bahrain and developments in digital financial services. This unit promoted an agile regulatory framework that fosters FinTech and innovation. Drawing on these initiatives, Bank ABC introduced its digital mobile-only retail arm, ila Bank, which would act as a new-age banking alternative for the emergent tech-savvy population in Bahrain.

Bank ABC (Arab Banking Corporation B.S.C.) is licensed as a conventional wholesale bank by the Central Bank of Bahrain. It is an international bank headquartered in Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain. Their network spreads across five continents, covering countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Revolutionising the regional retail banking landscape, Bank ABC launched the first exclusively cloud-based digital mobile-only bank – ‘ila Bank’- in Bahrain in November 2019. Now one of the fastest growing digital-only banks in the region, ila continues to enhance its innovative offering, addressing consumers’ ever-changing lifestyle needs and aspirations to deliver on its brand promise: “banking that reflects you”.

Project and Solution Overview

Bank ABC has been offering wholesale and retail financial services for more than 40 years. It embarked on a digital transformation journey to disrupt traditional banking models to meet changing customer needs. It recognised a market opportunity for a mobile-only banking offering with streamlined services and a simple user interface.

ila Bank was the first digital offering at Bank ABC to be built as part of its Cloud-first strategy. Security was a major priority, and executives at the Bank were confident that using Amazon Web Services (AWS) would help them comply with the regulations of the Central Bank of Bahrain for hosting banking workloads on the Cloud.

Implementation Excellence

As part of the build phase, the Bank partnered with AWS to deploy a core banking system for ila. Additionally, payment and API management systems were also implemented. The entire project was executed in a span of 11 months and the project went live in 2019. The team deployed for the project consisted of system integrators and architecture consultants from AWS coupled with the ila’s internal team. The key highlights and best practices adopted by the development team during the implementation process were:

• Agile Approach: The team adopted an agile execution methodology for products across all workstreams.
• Microservices Architecture: ila development team created a microservices based architecture platform that allowed quick delivery for the features and faster time to market.
• Scalability: This platform allowed the bank to scale its digital offerings on demand to support the exponential growth of its customer base
• Digital Onboarding: The onboarding platform was developed completely using digital services which enabled a fully automated onboarding process, without human intervention.
• 24/7 Availability: Any improvements and innovations could be rolled out to customers with zero downtime.
• Third Party Integration: The platform allowed seamless integration with third party providers.

 This is just the beginning of our journey to revolutionise the regional consumer banking landscape. As we gather more insights and engage with our customers, ila will evolve to reflect their emerging needs and aspirations.” -Mohamed Al Maraj, CEO, ila Bank Bahrain

By acting upon insights derived from its customer-centric offering and active social media engagement, ila introduced 35 app releases within 34 months of its operation. The releases included:

ila ‘Blue’ and ‘Switch’ credit cards, including an exclusive range of benefits, with a fully digital experience.

Seamless payment features such as Apple Pay, Fitbit Pay and Garmin Pay.

Seamless onboarding service, leveraging the national e-KYC system to enable customers to open an account in a couple of minutes, through a few simple steps.

‘Transfer by mobile number’ enabled hassle-free payments using the recipient’s mobile number, without the need for an IBAN. This payment method was implemented in collaboration with Benefit Pay, the national payment gateway

Benefits Achieved

In 2022, ila witnessed an increase of 102.5% in average daily onboarding and 1645% in average inward/outward payments since 2020.

Aided by Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, its human-centric design enables it to continuously respond to evolving customer needs and co-create tailored solutions to fulfill these needs.

Some of the benefits that the customers have experienced from ila Bank are:

• Accelerated Digital Onboarding: An account could be opened in as fast as 3 minutes using one ID and a ‘Selfie’
• Eight Foreign-Currency Accounts:  Multiple currency accounts and instant transfers between accounts at competitive exchange rates could be accessed and executed with one card.
• Seamless Payments/Transfers: Customers could utilise a variety of instant payment solutions to transfer moneylocally/internationally using a mobile number.
• Complete In-App Control: The app was armed with Enhanced security, flexibility. The app also enabled the customer to control their banking transactions with features such as instant link, block, freeze, order-a-card options, view and filter transactions.
• Innovative Savings Solutions: “Hassala”, a digital saving pot automating the saving process and “Jamiyah” a collaborative digital saving tool inspired by a longstanding regional community saving tradition.
• In-App Donations Feature: Instant charitable donations features which simplifies the giving back process.
• In-App Transaction History: Account activity could be reviewed instantly with advanced search and filter capabilities.
• In-App Investing: Instant Fixed Deposits, with competitive interest rates could be availed instantly through the app.

Conclusion

The overall reception of the customers towards ila Bank was overwhelmingly positive, which led to the Bank to achieve milestones such as 156% growth in total deposits in YTD 2022 as compared to 2020 and a 959% increase in average card transactions.

Since its inception, ila Bank has empowered consumers with an extremely personalized banking experience, 24/7/365 at their fingertips. Without the hassle of visiting physical branches and paper-intensive transactions, ila enables customers’ everyday lifestyle experiences and short-and-long-term financial aspirations through intuitive, simple and effortless banking solutions.

Key Facts

Financial Institution: ila Bank

Headquarters: Manama, Bahrain

Founded: 2019

Client: Inhouse Development

Solution: IaaS Based Digital Banking App

Timeline: 11 months with go-live in Sept 2019