UAE Retail Banking: Competitor Benchmarking 2024

UAE Retail Banking: Competitor Benchmarking 2024

Summary

This report benchmarks the largest retail banks in the UAE across a range of financial and customer satisfaction metrics. The report analyzes gains/losses in market share, depth of customer relationships, consumer pain points, and key metrics including Net Promoter Score, cross-selling, and digital satisfaction.

Emirates NBD Group remains the leading provider by market share across most of the main retail banking products, as the UAE market continues to concentrate. Most banks have improved their interest income and margin since 2018 due to the high-rate environment in the UAE.

Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank stands out as the leading bank for NPS, scoring 67%. On the other hand, customers of Al Hilal Bank are least likely to believe their main bank can help them achieve their financial goals in the UAE market. Nevertheless, these rates are generally much higher for UAE banks compared to elsewhere globally. Market average satisfaction, on the other hand, has declined across almost all metrics since 2023. The only digital-only bank, Mashreq Neo, did not score particularly high on digital satisfaction metrics, showing that a digital-only bank is not a guarantee of superior digital user experience.

Scope

• The five largest providers’ combined market shares across each product have increased yearly since 2018. The most dominant of these, Emirates NBD, now has nearly a third of the deposits, loans, and credit card markets.
• Mashreq Bank has a relatively low proportion of affluent customers but sells premium accounts to more than one in four customers.
• HSBC recorded the lowest NPS in 2024, with 17% of its customers being detractors, according to GlobalData’s 2024 Financial Services Consumer Survey.
• Cashback, automatic saving features, and spending categorization are the current account features that have the biggest impact on NPS. This suggests that consumers are valuing services that facilitate saving and make budgeting easier.

• Develop an understanding of the composition of the UAE retail banking market.
• Learn which banks are succeeding and which are failing across various metrics, ranging from profitability to Net Promotor Score.
• Identify the actionable steps that need to be taken by UAE banks to address their biggest shortcomings.