Interview With Business Person

Interview With Business Person

Interviewed person: Tirad Al-Mahmoud, EO of Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB)

Can you provide me with a description of your business?

Our business deals, obviously, with banking and this is done both for Muslim and non-Muslim communities. We provide loans and financing for housing, cars or education, but also for the small and medium enterprise sector. We provide different deposit products and consulting services for wealth management, insurance services and products for retirement. We don't do any operations on the stock exchange.

How long have you been in business?

We have been established in 1997, so we have been in the business for almost 17 years.

What type of business form do you have?

From our very beginning, we were created as a Public Joint Stock Company.

How do the socioeconomic, environmental, technological, legal and political environment impact your business?

I will say a truism and emphasize that the world is obviously changing. As I said previously, we are present in seven countries of the Middle East and Africa and this means that our business can be affected not only by the PESTEL factors in the UAE, but across the entire region. In terms of the political environment, the UAE has always been a symbol of political stability and this is very beneficial for our business, but some of the countries we are in cannot say the same thing.

The economic factor plays a fundamental role in our business, probably the greatest impact. In the UAE, Dubai was most affected by the economic situation, since it had made a lot of investments in the construction and real estate areas that collapsed. Abu Dhabi was much more prudent and I think this was also beneficial for us as well.

The technological factor is also becoming more and more important. We are looking to use technology particularly to improve customer service, which is an important dimension of our business. We want clients to be able to access our services faster and in a better and more secure way and technology is fundamental in that sense.

5. Do you know your competitors? How you forsee competitors strategies?

We need to look at our competition from the point-of-view of the markets we are operating in. As mentioned, we are present in Islamic countries from Africa and the Middle East, but we are also active in the UK. So, our competition is notable in Islamic banking, but also among some of the "mainstream" banks from the UK, including HSBC, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland. The competition's strategies seem to be including diversification: more and more banking and financing products are promoted by these banks on the market, looking to tap to more consumer segments.

6. How do you market your business?

We focus on customer service and we use a wide array of marketing tools, from electronic instruments to advertising in different magazines and newspapers. In our community, marketing through word of mouth is also essential: families spread the word about our services in the community and this is often how people learn about the way we do business and our products and services.