Al-Khorafi: Another area of NBK's advancement in technology innovations

Mohammed Al-Khorafi

KUWAIT: National Bank of Kuwait announces that it has successfully completed its SWIFT Global Payments Innovation (gpi) testing and is ready to launch the service. As a pioneer bank in Kuwait and the region, NBK joins the global gpi community consisting of more than 150 banks. NBK achieved this milestone after passing the rigorous testing phase.

SWIFT-gpi is the new payments standard for cross-border payments, that joins together all payment intermediaries via a cloud-hosted interface that makes it now possible to fully track and prove the time it takes for a payment sent from end client A to end client B through the gpi-active financial institutions involved in a payment chain.

Mohammed Al-Khorafi, General Manager- Operations Group at NBK said: "This is another area of advancement of NBK in technology innovations and an assertion of our strategy to remain consistent with the most advanced international standards as the leading Bank in Kuwait.

He added It improves efficiency, it's a step forward to better services for clients and better communication and reconciliation. NBK continues to enhance the excellence of the banking sector in Kuwait."

Onur Ozan, SWIFT Head of Middle East, Turkey and North Africa, said: "We are delighted that NBK has completed the SWIFT gpi testing phase and is now ready to go live on the service. With SWIFT gpi, NBK will offer its customers more certainty, transparency and traceability in their cross-border payments. We look forward to seeing more Middle Eastern banks go live on SWIFT gpi in the months to come and encourage all banks in the region to adopt this new standard for cross-border payments.

This new messaging technology available to the SWIFT GPI community and member banks only, has led to a digital transformation of cross border payments and ultimately focuses on significantly improving customer service and satisfaction. By connecting every intermediary in the payment chain, SWIFT- gpi grants each party visibility of a payment status, unaltered remittance information and transaction costs and also delivers greater traceability and transparency allowing banks to instantly check the status of payments.

NBK clients will benefit from same day transfer and use of funds, as well as reduced timelines and transparency on fees along with enhanced security. As a next phase of this initiative, NBK is working to extend this facility to its esteemed clients for self-service tracking of payments; this is good news especially for corporate clients as it reduces the time and costs spent on investigations, allowing them to speed up supply chain and reduce risk, track important payments and easily reconcile payments and invoices. NBK constantly endeavors to adopt the latest innovations in technology to better service its clients worldwide. Launching SWIFT- gpi raises the standards of international payments, reduces operational burden and creates efficiency in treasury and reconciliation of payments.

It also increases security in cross border payments as it identifies the various steps that the payment is going through and ensures that transaction details are not altered.

The future direction of SWIFT- gpi to introduce capability to stop and recall payments immediately, reduces cases of errors and fraud, and will add more comfort to NBK's clients and affirm the commitment of NBK to Kuwait's Banking sector as the leading bank in Kuwait.

NBK continues to collectively enjoy the highest credit ratings from the three international rating agencies; Moody's, Fitch Ratings and Standard and Poor's. The Bank's ratings are supported by its high capitalization, prudent lending policies, and its disciplined approach to risk management, in addition to its highly recognized and very stable management team. NBK also maintains its position among the 50 safest banks in the world for the twelfth consecutive year.

NBK Group has the widest banking presence in 4 continents worldwide. NBK's international presence spans many of the world's leading financial centers including London, Paris, Geneva, New York and Singapore, as well as China (Shanghai). Meanwhile, regional coverage extends to Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey.