Emirates NBD bank hot in social media: Emirates NBD, Dubai’s largest lender, has been ranked 25th in the world for social media in 2014, the best performance by a bank based in the Middle East.
Compiled by The Financial Brand, a USA-based online publication, its Power 100 is the only like-for-like ranking of banks’ success rate in social media platforms.
Additionally, the bank was ranked 29 on the Top 100 banks on Twitter with over 41,000 followers, and 14 for most all-time YouTube views, in the independent survey that calculates ranking based on Facebook ‘likes,’ Facebook ‘engagement rate,’ Twitter followers, Tweets sent, YouTube views and YouTube subscribers.
Neil Halligan writes: Shayne Nelson head of the NBD bank announced income was up 22 percent to $3.9bn and net profit increased by 58 percent, to $1.38bn.
In what was reportedly one of the shortest AGMs in the bank’s recent history, shareholders approved an increased cash dividend of 35 fils per share.
A 36-year veteran of the banking industry, the Perth native admits his intended career path almost didn’t happen before it started, when he missed his stop for an interview with ANZ Bank.
From bank teller to CEO, Nelson has been involved in most parts of the banking industry, firstly in Australia and later in Asia, when he moved between Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia with Standard Chartered, before taking over as CEO of its Middle East and North Africa business. He took over at Emirates NBD a year ago. .
Emirates NBD’s recent conservative approach means that it can cope with any potential headwinds.
“Competition is quite tough,” he admits, “but we have scale and that’s one of the big advantages that we have in the UAE, with our branch network, our loan size, our ATM network, our point of sale, and so on. We have the right mix of business between consumer and wholesale,” he adds.
And he’s also added a few products in the bank’s treasury platform to tap into some fee-earning business that foreign banks had been capitalising on.
While the results and the changes that he put in place have all been positive for Emirates NBD, Nelson does have a number of concerns, including the price of oil and the effect on liquidity.
The Al Etihad Credit Bureau has been widely welcomed by the banking industry, including Nelson, who says banks will be able to “price the risk a lot better”, but he warns there could be a drop in consumer loan demand, and therefore spending as well, as banks “get to know what they didn’t know” about their customers.
