Louis A. Scotto

Now with 112,000 clients and adding 15,000 accounts a month, meBANK is the fastest growing bank in the region. Heading operations is ex-Citibank and NBK man Louis A. Scotto whose ambitions for the future are big.

'Within three years EBI wants to source 50% of its profits from retail banking, compared with 30% today,' he says. 'We presently have 19 meBANK locations and we expect to add 30 more in the next two years'.

This will involve the opening of 15 to 20 meBANKs in Abu Dhabi alone, and a regional debut in Riyadh, where EBI is presently awaiting its operating certificate.

But to step back a moment, what exactly is meBANK? 'A meBANK branch has an ATM, PC, plasma screen and telephone,' explains Mr. Scotto. 'We felt Internet banking needed to combine the benefits of new technology with a physical human presence, and that is the formula that we have developed.

'We want banking to be fun and not like going to the dentist. meBANK is evolving into being the only retail part of EBI, and already our other retail banking products and services have been phased out in favour of meBANK'.

So what began as an Internet banking concept is replacing traditional banking at EBI. Quite a shake-up for what was a conservative commercial bank with a rather dowdy retail arm, the Middle East Bank. The latter has been conveniently shortened to the catchy title meBANK, though Mr. Scotto says this was entirely a coincidence, and the acronym was unintentional.

'meBANK stands for personal banking anywhere, anytime and any how,' he adds. 'But the brand has really caught on, and in a recent Super Brand survey was rated one of the top regional brands, alongside EBI, quite an achievement in less than two years'.

The development of the brand has been clever. First, came the launch of the first few branches, but this has been quickly followed by the roll-out of ME car loans, ME credit cards, and ME just about everything. All have been positioned as the cheapest in the UAE financial services' marketplace. Even a ME online brokerage is planned for the near future.

Net services such as ME Shop have also been added, again guaranteeing the lowest prices of goods offered in its online shopping arcade. Next will be affinity group brands such as ME University for students, ME Ladies for women, and ME Professionals.

'We are able to identify affinity groups and be really customer driven,' says Mr. Scotto. 'The best thing would be to get customer tailoring down to one-to-one, and we will be driving this business ahead with some more exciting initiatives this autumn, and have one big launch planned for Gitex'.

MeBANK has levered the cost advantages of the Internet to great advantage. Mr. Scotto points out that the new branch of EBI at Jebel Ali will cost around $1.4 million while a meBANK branch costs $33,000 to $40,000 to set up. EBI also has the natural advantage that as a local bank it has no limitations on the number of branches that it can open, unlike its competitors Citibank and HSBC.

'We also want to franchise the meBANK concept and open branches in car showrooms, for example. It is a natural fit, as they already need car loans and can sell other banking services on a revenue sharing basis. Shopping malls are another possibility.'

But Mr. Scotto agrees that low Internet penetration rates limit the ability of meBANK to spread out around the region. However, he notes that meBANK branches provide customers with PC access, so this need not be such a limitation in places like Lebanon with high levels of computer literacy and a young PC-savvy population.

Another problem is that such an open marketing trawl, and highly competitive pricing has inevitably attracted some poor quality business. Mr. Scotto freely admits this posed a dilemma and that prices of some services have been raised to maintain the standard of customer.

It is hard not to be impressed by meBANK whose combination of an innovative service and low pricing has proved irresistible to many consumers. The service is also about to get a major competitor in the shape of Dubai Bank, the largely online bank owned by Emaar Properties that is set to launch this autumn.

Mr. Scotto says he welcomes quality competition in the marketplace and has a healthy respect for the Dubai Bank's ceo Ahmed bin Brek, a former colleague from his Citibank days. Meantime, he plans to launch ME home loans in the New Year in head on competition with Emaar.