Taking Islamic banking to the next level with fintech innovation
Our client’s backstory
The bank is one of the biggest Islamic banks in the world that has been constantly on the rise for the past 20 years in the UAE and the MENA region. It serves more than one million customers and is meanwhile known for numerous awards it received for its solutions in digital banking services, personalized customer experience and innovation.
It operates in all major MENA markets and the UK, offering personal, business, private, and corporate banking products and securities solutions. From all kinds of accounts and cards, wealth management, investment and merchant services to global transactions, insurance, personal finances and securities, the bank covers a wide range of different user needs.
As a leader in its market, the organization wanted to transition from a traditional finance institution to a modern and flexible solution provider in all matters finance, leveraging innovative technology to advance financial inclusion and the Islamic fintech ecosystem that just had started to take shape as an appealing concept in the Middle East.
With digital globalization taking over the finance world, the bank saw an opportunity to strengthen its position in the region with customer-centric products by adopting modern and tech-powered solutions and making them work in line with the Sharia Law.
The challenges
The highly ambitious project required a specific know-how and experience in implementing the best fintech practices and the best industry solutions that would cover a range of different products and services. Wanting someone who has already tested the waters, the bank decided on a cross-continent collaboration, selecting Klika as an exclusive partner in cooperation with a German fintech startup, to bring in the needed expertise, knowledge and experience to start the digital transition.
The project also required digging deeper into Islamic banking regulations under Sharia Law and making sure all legal requirements are met and the region’s traditional banking values are reflected throughout the transformation, setting a norm for future development of Islamic fintech. After we got acquainted with the specifics, requirements and the culture, we had to create a strategy that would successfully help us remove technological roadblocks and build scalable solutions that support reliable and efficient communication with the backend system, all the while making sure security, data privacy and accuracy are top priorities.
Klika solution
In line with the client’s needs, we assigned a corresponding team that consisted of frontend, backend and QA engineers. Our team was solely responsible for building an exceptional internet banking experience, including end-to-end frontend and backend integration that would allow customers to access all services with just a few clicks.
We extensively familiarized ourselves with Islamic banking regulations and studied through the lengthy e-paperwork to be able to develop and integrate feature such as the Sukuk Certificate and Murabaha Contract, which are common in Islamic banking.
We developed the entire user onboarding experience with a short and smooth registration process (taking only a few minutes) that does not require extensive documentation on the user’s end. We also created an API on top of the main OS to add new products, like personal finance services, personalized savings plans, eligibility calculators for fund approvals and loans, utility payment schemes, requesting new cards and other useful features that help customers stay on top of their finances.
After creating an exceptional internet banking experience that easily parallels the best global fintech solutions, our team was asked to conduct a security analysis of the entire banking system’s codebase. In the process, we removed several high severity issues and implemented security measures, enhancing the bank’s overall security and performance.
Results
With a supreme internet banking experience that enables users access to finances from the comfort of their home, new customers started coming in waves, helping the bank further expand to new markets and reinforce customer loyalty. Already one year into the collaboration, the bank registered over 60% of transactions being carried out digitally on the new platform.
New personalized products and the overall modern approach to banking established the bank as a forerunner of digital transformation in the MENA region. The organization is currently evaluated at $39 billion worth in assets and is a well-known brand. The elaborate system we developed opened the doors to several awards for the best digital banking experience and innovation by acclaimed global institutions (like Forbes, Global Finance, etc.), making us proud of the partnership and the long-term solutions that support new growth.
Technology stack
Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Redis, Docker
