Should regional banks buy or build their innovations?

Should regional banks buy or build their innovations?

In a study published by McKinsey, it showed banking to be one of the Middle East’s most digitised industries. The means of brand interaction among banking customers was 87 per cent digital in the UAE. Put plainly, this proportion of customers reported that their engagement was either fully digital or involved remote assistance. This proportion was even higher in Saudi Arabia (92 per cent), a country that anticipates that 70 per cent of its payment transactions will be digital by 2030. The McKinsey study also showed Egypt’s banking sector to have 82 per cent digital interaction. The GCC has always been out in front of regional peers with the digitisation of the FSI sector. Dubai’s Mashreq launched the appropriately named Neo, the first digital bank in the Middle East. And Kuwait Finance House developed KFH-Go, the region’s first e-branch — an unstaffed business unit capable of providing more than 30 services. Each of these innovative project teams faced a common question in their journey to “pioneerhood”: build or buy? Today’s consumers wait for nothing and no one. If you drag your feet for too long, you miss the boat. One of your competitors will have done it first. In the