Dubai: Liv., the lifestyle digital bank by Emirates NBD targeted at millennials has completed its first year of operations acquiring 100,000 customers, becoming the fastest growing bank in the UAE.
Leveraging on in its success in the UAE, the bank has plans to expand the mobile-only banking propositions to other regional markets such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt while adding more features.
“We created Liv., the mobile-only bank to support the UAE Vision 2021’s strategic objectives of creating a smart innovation-driven economy. Its growth has surpassed our expectations and is fast becoming the bank of choice for the UAE’s millennial customer base,” said Abdulla Qassem — Group Chief Operating Officer, Emirates NBD.
- Jayash Patel | Head of Liv
The bank’s fully mobile app based customer acquisition strategy seems to have caught on well with the target audience on the back of its unique lifestyle-led proposition, innovative features and gamified promotional campaigns.
“We are pleasantly surprised by the popularity the bank has gained across the country with more than 10,000 customers on-boarded on an average every month. While the customer acquisition and servicing is fully digital, the entire process is carried out with no branches, no sales teams, and no paper,” said Suvo Sarkar — Senior Executive Vice President & Head, Retail Banking & Wealth Management.
The smart phone-based bank has set a new benchmark in cost income ratios in the UAE’s banking sector. Our overall cost to income ratios are about half of the main bank.
Liv.’s platform integrates lifestyle preferences with banking, helping customers keep track of their daily life and their finances on one app. The bank’s features include instant and completely paperless account opening, fund transfers through social media channels, carrying out instant bill splits with friends, tagging expenses to keep track of spends, international 60-second remittances as well as curated daily feeds of selected deals and happenings in the UAE, personalised to the customer’s preferences.
Data on customer-base of the bank shows 82 per cent of customers are millennials and 84 per cent are new to Emirates NBD.
“Liv.’s success within its launch year is testament to the growing maturity of the UAE market, as consumers embrace digital innovation in all aspects of their life. We continue to invest in our offering and strengthen appeal as we expand our product offering with the launch of new products on the platform,” Jayash Patel, Head of Liv.
The bank is planning to take innovate further on its offerings, living up to the expectations of its core customer base. Liv. launched of Liv. Goals, a new feature that allows customers to set and save towards financial goals to help them achieve more of what they want, such as travel, buying a new gizmo, to gift a loved one or to simply save for a rainy day.
Emirates NBD Group has a Dh1 billion investment programme targeted at digital transformation. “Liv.’s success has come as further motivation for our other digital initiatives. “We are incredibly proud of the overwhelmingly positive response that Liv. has received, as we continue to innovate and lead the region’s banking sector,” said Qassem.
