ShareKUWAIT: To continue highlighting the international and regional developments of sustainability and ESG metrics, Boubyan Bank has issued its second sustainability report for 2021 that tackles sustainability indicators as well as its impact on environmental, social, and economic criteria in addition to corporate governance, which are all considered crucial aspects to evaluate the Group's performance and positioning in ESG and sustainable development locally and regionally.
On this occasion, Boubyan Bank's CEO - Private, Consumer & Digital Banking, Abdulla Al-Tuwaijri, stated: "As sustainability is gaining grounds and becoming a necessity, and as it has become one of the most significant factors in evaluating organizations of all sectors locally and internationally, today Boubyan Bank releases its second sustainability report for 2021, which highlights the effective role of accounting for Boubyan Bank's sustainability indicators in facing the challenges of the crisis, which helped us achieve high service and performance levels."
"The year 2021 was exceptional and was no less challenging than 2020. After what we went through in 2020 and our success in overcoming its obstacles and difficulties, we were faced with a new challenge, namely returning to the business market which is no longer having the same levels of performance we had before the crisis, but rather a stronger market where competition has significantly grown among organizations of the financial and banking sector per se," he added.
With regards to governance aspects, Al-Tuwaijri elaborated: "We are keen on monitoring and measuring the Group's ESG metrics, and we ensure to report and communicate our commitments transparently to our concerned stakeholders. Boubyan Bank always seeks to safeguard shareholders' rights, protect its investment value, and avoid any conflict of interest through complying to all ethical standards and strengthening its shareholders' roles, specifically in decision-taking processes that are related to their investments."
The bank's vision
Al-Tuwaijri pointed out that Boubyan considers sustainability as one of the main drivers of the bank's vision, which aspires to become one of the largest Islamic banks in the industry. He added: "2021's sustainability report is based on the Group's evaluation and disclosure of all its sustainability related performance metrics, especially covering various aspects that concern our customers, shareholders, employees, and the society as a whole; thus, reflecting the Group's steady that is focused on laying solid sustainability foundations." "Our target is to become one of the leaders in terms of exhibiting sustainable performance, and we further aim to enhance such practice and to maintain transparent communication with our stakeholders by disclosing the Group's performance of non-financial and ESG indicators.", he stressed.
Digital transformation development and customer service excellence
The report tackles Boubyan Bank's successful journey towards digital transformation as Boubyan Bank is one of the most prominent Kuwaiti banks that invested heavily in digital banking services over the past years, thus placing the bank as a leader among Islamic banks locally and globally, evidenced by being named the World's Best Islamic Digital Bank by Global Finance for seven consecutive years. The report also dwells on Boubyan Bank's journey of digital transformation which went through many phases with one ultimate goal, namely to offer a competitive and an exceptional experience to our customers that keeps pace with digital developments across the banking and financial sector.
The attempts and changes have become fruitful, thereby making access to the group's services and products in a much faster and easier manner, while at the same time resulted in enhancing our operational and productive efficiency and in effectively minimizing the Group's paper transactions thus, improving our environmental footprint. Numbers show a great annual growth in the number of Boubyan Bank's customers who use digital banking services. We can say that more than 90 percent of customers use such services whether through smart phones or the bank's website.
Al-Tuwaijri went on to stress that "The management of the bank spares no effort to evaluate and improve our customers' experience. Boubyan Bank remained atop the pyramid of customer service across the Kuwaiti banking sector, which was evidenced by earning the Best Islamic Bank in Customer Service award for the twelfth consecutive year since 2010 by Service Hero, the international consumer-driven customer satisfaction index." "Owing to those efforts, we scored 95 percent in the Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI), which confirms that we deserve to be the best in customer service atop the Kuwaiti banking sector", he added.
Youth empowerment and supporting SMEs
The year 2021 was exceptional for our human resources, and the report dedicates a section to the role played by the bank and its leadership position among local banks and the private sector in terms of implementing several important initiatives towards the growth and development of its employees, the enhancement of their skills and through training programs and special workshops; this instilled more loyalty in our staff to their organization and has attracted several fresh graduates to seek a job opportunity at Boubyan. At the level of women empowerment in leadership positions, 52 female employees were hired in management positions while 1 female employee is a board member in BLME. We have also increased our Kuwaitization percentage by 2.1 percent compared with the bank's performance in 2020, while the Kuwaitization in management levels has increased to 4.5 percent.
Since 2012 and until the end of last year, more than 110 of our employees of both genders enrolled in the MBA program in collaboration with GUST, while the number of e-learning programs exceeded 10,000 training programs in areas related to banking, finance, technical, and management skills needed by the bank's employees. 635 employees of the bank successfully completed these programs by enrolling in LinkedIn platform for digital learning and development as well as the training platform of Euromoney, the renowned international institution. It is worth noting that a total of 20,846 training hours were earned in 2021.
In cooperation with the Institute of Banking Studies "IBS", the bank offered training to 134 employees during 2021. These training programs focused on specialized banking skills as well as other technical and technological capabilities. Furthermore, the report has a special section dedicated to Boubyan Bank's commitment to supporting SMEs as well as the growth of the Kuwaiti economy through the bank's products and services, which cater for the needs of the bank's SME customers, whose number grew by 22 percent compared with last year.
Moreover, Boubyan has its own Incubation Program to help SMEs' entrepreneurs; the program serves as an initiative that assists and incubates entrepreneurs by providing the knowledge, training, networking facilities, workshops, and everything needed by SMEs to help them grow, innovate, and become established.
Environmental impacts
From an environmental performance level, we managed to reduce our GHG emissions of Scope III by 34 percent. This highlights our contribution and responsibility towards climate change issues. We have also reduced our water consumption by 44.2 percent and ensured to recycle 731 electronic devices, which led to the reduction of approximately 11.5 GHG by MT CO2e
"We are pleased to release Boubyan Bank's Second Sustainability Report 2021, where we have shed the light on Boubyan's ESG journey, and our way forward to reaching excellence and leading by example, as a benchmark in the banking and financial sector, and as a shariah-compliant entity.", Al-Tuwaijri concluded.
