14th March 2023, Dubai: This week we’re delighted to bring you an award that highlights a new innovation by the team at Ahli Bank Oman.

Two weeks ago they announced an upcoming IPO that is available for subscription via their mobile app. Essentially customers are able to specify how many shares they’d like to purchase in the IPO and fulfil this via the mobile app. This in itself is not new: It’s a common feature of banking apps in Oman.

However, the team made the announcement of the Abraj Energy IPO with a new feature: 1:1 Financing of your subscription through the app.

It’s well known in the region that IPO subscriptions are not open for very long. Indeed you have to be quick if you’d like to snap up shares of a particular entity. For example, it looked like the Abraj Energy IPO subscription was only available for about two weeks. However, it can be somewhat inconvenient if you don’t have the required funds immediately on hand and still wish to participate.

We are therefore a fan of the new feature the team have introduced: Borrow additional amounts as you subscribe to the IPO within the app. This means you can then pay the balance off at your leisure – perhaps later that month on Salary Payment Day or as you wish.

Additional features like these really add to the experience of the end-user and it’s great thinking from the Ahli Bank Digital team to include such a feature. Such features are not easy to create and need rigorous testing prior to release to customers – which is one of the reasons not many banks tend to favour innovation.

We conceived these awards to highlight new innovations and to give them the attention they deserve. Delivering new features to the market is complex in regulated environments. Further, it can also be difficult to persuade senior business executives to support and sponsor new updates when there are so many other demands on their attention and budgets.

We congratulate Bilal Anwar, Deputy CEO of the Business Group at Ahli Bank along with his colleague Taher Albakhsh Al Balushi, General Manager of Strategy, Transformation & Project Management, together with the wider Ahli Bank team. Here at Global Banking Monitor, we’re looking forward to seeing the next feature you launch to enhance the digital customer experience for Ahli Bank Oman.

Assigned by Sebastien Parker
Senior Research Analyst
Global Banking Monitor
14th March 2023

Notes: Read about our Award methodology here.