Khamis M. Buharoon (page 2 of 2)

Two years ago barely 10% of NBAD customers carried credit cards, and now that number has more than doubled. There is also a special Platinum Card for high net worth customers with a range of special services such as an airport pick-up, valet parking and life insurance. And newest additions to the range are a virtual card for Internet shopping and a Visa Travel Money card to load up with money for foreign travelling.

NBAD has promoted its Visa and MasterCard credit cards through a variety of innovative promotions. The latest is a co-promotion with Gulf Air offering a raffle for a free ticket every year for the rest of your life. There have been other co-promotions with Mercedes and Fiat.

'Our target is to get 65% of our customers as credit card users over the next five years', says Mr Buharoon. 'But this is a matter of educating the marketplace. We still have customers who use a credit card to withdraw cash from an ATM and then spend it. That is not how we want them to use their cards'.

The National Bank of Abu Dhabi is clearly enjoying a phase of expansion and modernisation under its new management team, and remains the UAE's largest bank with assets of around $10 billion. Net profits surged from $84.7m to $139.7m in the year 2000, and will rise again this year.

'Of course we are only building on the success of the past 30 years,' says Mr Buharoon. 'We still have staff who joined the bank then, and that is a great strength. Part of our strategy is to continue investing in our staff and training them to meet the challenges ahead.'

Mr Buharoon forecasts a very good year for the UAE banks in 2001, after a successful year 2000, and reckons the UAE stock market will soon start to register an improvement. Naturally the NBAD has a fund to allow its national and expatriate customers to invest in the UAE stock market.

For the NBAD, it seems that the only way is up, and its customers are already feeling the benefit of new products and services that were unavailable two years ago.