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UAE banks need to improve customer service - poll

UAE banks need to improve their customer service across the board, the results of the latest Arabian Business survey show.

When asked if there were too many banks operating in the country, some 53.8 percent of people said they did not care about the number because service was “terrible wherever you go.”
Earlier this month, the Bank Benchmarking Study of 27 UAE banks found service quality had gone up 9.3 percent to 78.2 percent, compared to 68.9 percent last year.

This was because of a shift in banks’ attitudes towards customer retention following the financial crisis, the study by Ethos Consultancy said.

The top ranking bank in the Ethos study was RAKbank, who has held the title for the last four years and at the same time has managed to see customer number rise by 15 percent, profits jump 10 percent in the first nine months of this year and has not made any staff redundancies.

Graham Honeybill, General Manager, RAKbank said he believes staff motivation and training are the most important factors and inherently lead to good customer service and satisfaction.

“One of the key drivers of service quality is your people. If you have faith in your staff and you reward them they produce,” Honeybill told Arabian Business

The bank also has a team of 35 staff working on customer service and Honeybill said they plan to hire an additional five staff next year.

However, the AB poll results shows that despite these improvements banks in general still have some way to go before they meet expectations in customer care.

One interesting point to emerge was that Islamic banks performed better than their non-Islamic rivals.

The overall customer satisfaction score for Islamic Banks increased from 69.8 percent in 2008 to 81.5 percent in 2009, an 11.7 percent increase. By comparison, non-Islamic banks increased from 68.6 percent in ‘08 to 77.7 percent in ’09, representing an increase of 9.1 percent. Therefore Islamic Banks outperformed non-Islamic banks by 3.8 percent overall.

Robert Keay, Ethos managing director, predicted next year will see an increase in the number of bank mergers.

According to the AB poll, 30.3 percent of people agreed with Keay saying there were not enough people to support all the banks, so mergers were likely.

Just 3.8 percent of respondents said the sector needed to have smaller banks, especially post financial crisis.

While 12 percent of respondents said banks from certain countries like India, which have a large expatriate population living in the UAE, are currently under represented.

In September Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) granted the State Bank of India a full banking licence to operate in the emirates.

Indian expats make up about 33 percent of the UAE population, yet until two months ago only the Bank of Baroda had a licence. Baroda’s branches have since been closed.

According to the Central Bank's latest monthly report, there were 46 new bank branches set up in the UAE in the first ten months of the year and the total number of branches rose from 611 in 2008 to 657.

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