Sandeep Chouhan

EVP - Group Head of Operations & Technology, Mashreq Bank

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Sandeep Chouhan tells Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East Editor Roger Field about the latest trends in digital banking, investing in fintechs and the importance of China’s belt and road initiative.

Mashreq Bank is the oldest private bank in the UAE having been established in 1967 as the Bank of Oman. Tell me about where the bank is at now in terms of size and scale.

The bank is in its 51st year of operation and we now operate in 14 countries. The bank was set up by entrepreneurs and retains that spirit of entrepreneurship.

We have close to five and a half thousand employees and close to 70 branches. We do the full range of corporate banking, investment banking, Islamic treasury, capital markets, retail and consumer banking, and now we have a full-fledged digital bank as a second segment.

We have four main lines of business in our corporate banking; we have taken an industry specialization-based approach and focus on six or seven industry segments including real estate, manufacturing, oil and gas and government. We build specialization around that and our corporate banking business is heavily based on face-to-face relationships with senior relationship managers and senior corporate bankers. The retail banking business on the other hand is digitally driven to bring more customers to consume banking services electronically. Today, almost 92 percent of all transactions we perform are digitally originated. That’s very high in comparison to our competition.

It sounds like technology is an important focus for the bank?