Gulf Bank saves costs, boosts customer experience with Oracle Banking Solutions

Large Kuwait bank improves digital and in-person interactions across retail and corporate banking activities with Oracle financial applications.

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Our relationship with Oracle is that of a strategic partnership that is characterized by mutual trust, collaboration, and a shared vision for innovation. Oracle has been instrumental in helping us achieve our digital transformation objectives, and their continued support plays a vital role in driving our growth and enhancing customer experiences.

Shahzad AnjumCIO, Gulf Bank

Business challenges

Founded in 1960, Gulf Bank is one of the largest financial institutions in Kuwait, offering products and services for consumer banking, wholesale banking, treasury, and financial services. The bank embraced technology to help address industry challenges, including the shift toward cashless transactions, heightened regulatory requirements, and increased customer expectations for a personalized and seamless experience.

For decades, the company relied on Oracle solutions for managing corporate banking activities, such as general ledger and internet banking. Retail operations ran on a separate infrastructure and set of applications. Overall, IT staff supported over 70 applications. Company leaders wanted greater agility, a stronger focus on innovation, and an increased emphasis on customer service across the organization. They recognized that streamlining the bank’s technology and applications infrastructure would bring growth, increased innovation, and a superior banking experience for customers.

Oracle’s financial services consulting team made the migration process more manageable by delivering a clear and structured roadmap, offering comprehensive training programs for our staff, and providing ongoing support throughout the project.

Shahzad AnjumCIO, Gulf Bank

Why Gulf Bank chose Oracle

Gulf Bank conducted an extensive evaluation of its options for unifying its application and technology infrastructure across all banking operations. Ultimately, Gulf Bank chose Oracle Banking Solutions to upgrade its corporate banking arm and also replace its legacy retail banking system. Oracle’s Retail Banking Solutions on Oracle Private Cloud Appliance would bring scalability, flexibility, and advanced capabilities to address the company’s challenges. It would also allow Gulf Bank to operate on an engineered system that delivers compute, storage, and networking, compatible with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), in an on-premises deployment model. Additionally, Gulf Bank selected Oracle’s Financial Services Global Industry Unit consulting team to both guide the implementation and to provide managed services for the new platform on a long-term basis.

Results

After consolidating its corporate and retail banking operations with Oracle Banking Solutions, Gulf Bank now enjoys real-time processing, improved collateral management, and seamless integration with Kuwait’s credit system for automated loan origination and credit assessment.

Meeting both conventional and Islamic banking requirements, Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking supported the bank’s growth across retail, corporate, and investment banking. Oracle Banking Digital Experience Cloud Service boosted customer experience with intuitive, personalized, and user-friendly interfaces. Oracle Banking Branch improved in-branch customer interactions by handing retail teller transactions, which in turn reduced costs, increased service efficiency, and streamlined everyday processes. The automated workflows and real-time reporting in Oracle Banking Trade Finance helped ensure compliance with regulatory standards. Gulf Bank also deployed Oracle Banking Payments and Oracle Banking Corporate Lending.

With Oracle Banking Solutions, Gulf Bank established Kuwait’s first microservice architecture-based application, which streamlined workflows. This design strategy design brought maximum deployment flexibility, as each microservice is containerized and deployed separately. Gulf Bank gained control over deployments, allowing IT staff to update or scale any specific microservice based on its requirements. The bank realized a 10% reduction in technology support costs and greater business efficiency, along with significant improvements in customer satisfaction scores. The number of applications supported by IT staff dropped from over 70 to about 20.

Published:January 17, 2025

About the customer

Gulf Bank is one of the leading non-Islamic banks in Kuwait with KD 7.5 billion in total assets as of September 2024. The bank offers consumer banking, wholesale banking, treasury, and financial services through its network of over 50 branches and over 300 ATMs.