Gulf Bank, a leading bank in Kuwait, was presented the ‘Credit Risk Technology Implementation of the Year in the Middle East and Africa’ award by The Asian Banker at a ceremony held earlier this month at the Conrad Hotel in Dubai.

The Asian Banker is one of Asia’s leading consulting companies in financial services research, benchmarking and intelligence.

Commenting on this award, Laila Al-Qatami, assistant general manager for Corporate Communications at Gulf Bank said: “Gulf Bank is proud to be the recipient of this prestigious award. This award serves as a benchmark for global best practices in risk management and Gulf Bank was selected for this award from all the applicants from the Middle East and North Africa region.”

Raghunandan Menon, general manager of Risk Management at Gulf Bank, emphasised the importance of the Bank’s risk management, saying: “With our partner, Intellect Design Arena Limited, we implemented a highly effective consumer risk collection system which has helped Gulf Bank advance key business priorities. This credit risk technology implementation has delivered a state-of-the-art retail collection system that has reduced delinquencies, increased the control of delinquency volumes, and decreased our overall provision pool.”

All banks and non-bank financial institutions (including insurance companies, brokerages, credit companies and finance companies) with operations in Middle East and Africa were eligible for submission. The entrants for the Credit Risk Technology Implementation award were assessed based on detailed descriptions and documentations of how the strength of the institution’s risk management core competencies was applied.

Prior to its selection, Gulf Bank was carefully assessed by a panel of industry experts and judges across a stringent set of criteria to determine the Bank’s overall performance and services compared to other local banking competitors. The selection process began in August and finished in October, and involved a team of researchers working in tandem.  The initial selection is through a survey and desk research done by the research team at the Asian Banker. The identified candidates are then subject to further scrutiny though interviews and their names are put into a poll that is distributed to The Asian Banker’s 38,000 readers.

After the results of the poll and the research have been compiled, a short-list of candidates is then submitted for review by the international board of advisors for a final evaluation and recommendation to determine which candidate should receive the award. The exemplary implementations are subsequently documented and published as research noted in the Risk and Regulation Working Group, the Asian Banker’s repository of best practices in the industry. - TradeArabia News Service