Gulf African Bank recognised in raising customer experience

Gulf African Bank (GAB) says it has enhanced its online payment methods to boost customer experience and internal efficiencies.

The leading Shari’ah Compliant SME bank has deployed more online payment methods and upgraded the bank’s credit policies to make facility disbursement easier.

Due to these efforts, the lender was recently recognized as the Best organization in Raising Customer Experience at the recent CSWeek 2017 gala awards dinner.

According to the bank, there have been deliberate continuous initiatives aimed at improving convenient banking for customers, maintaining regulatory compliance and increasing the bank’s profitability.

The bank recorded the second highest industry growth in customer deposits by 42.1 percent in the 2017 Half Year to June results, Non-interest income grew by 56.8 percent in the period. This reciprocated to a 102 percent jump in Net Profit income to Ksh 943M and 60 percent rise in Profit Before Tax in the period, reaffirming the bank’s position as the leading SME Shariah-compliant bank in East Africa.

Carol Kigome the Customer Experience Manager at GAB highlighted customer experience as the differentiating factor in the banking industry.

“The banking sector has been quite tough since the rate cap and as such, industry players had to re-strategize lock our customers. We [Banks] are offering the same services but the one thing that will not get duplicated is the service you offer the customer from the moment they interact with your customer touch points,” she said.

To advance services to its customers, GAB has adopted the BIZ2Bank platform which provides real-time transfer of funds from MpesaTill or Paybill Number, to one’s Gulf African Bank Account.

Moreover, while banks shut down their local branches due to the advancement of technology, GAB is increasing its geographical footprint. This is in a bid to stem concentration risk while also increasing their network reach, to deliver customer experience to customer’s locations, as a way of complimenting technology.

“The bottom Line is to show that we care. This was not a one-week experience; it is a whole year’s affair. It is our whole life; our lives revolve around customers and that’s what we were trying to bring out in our day to day interactions with our stakeholders.” adds Carol.