Manama: ila Bank, Bahrain’s fast growing digital mobile-only bank, launched the first-of-its-kind, digital ‘Jamiyah’ in Bahrain. Stemming from an informal regional community saving tradition, the innovative banking service automates the entire end-to-end ‘Jamiyah’ process in seamless and effortless steps. This comes as part of ila’s promise to continuously sense market needs and deploy tailored solutions that enable customers’ financial goals and aspirations. It also accelerates the Government’s vision to facilitate a cashless, digital economy.
From inviting individuals to join custom Jamiyah’s, setting collection targets to automatically deducting monthly contributions from members, the digital ‘Jamiyah’ formalizes this long-standing tradition, while saving valuable time and effort. Participants can maintain a clear trail of each member’s contribution instead of the manual way of book keeping and collecting funds in cash.
“We are delighted to deliver on our promise to continue to introduce innovative products and services that better suit our clients and communities. Jamiyah is an example of our vision to combine technological innovation with human behaviour to create new products and services that reflect the needs of our customers,” Sael Al Waary, Deputy Group CEO, Bank ABC, who spearheaded the creation of ila, while commenting on this much anticipated product launch, said.
“ila is all about adapting banking to reflect customer lifestyles, needs and aspirations. This product appeals to all segments of our community and amid the current ‘contactless’ environment, its launch could not have been timelier. We are proud to continue to bring market-first products such as Jamiyah to Bahrain,” Mohamed Almaraj, CEO, ila Bank Bahrain said.
This groundbreaking feature has been designed with a goal to build financial capabilities and resilience in the local community. Extensive focus groups were conducted to understand the pain points that Bahraini’s have today when participating in Jamiyahs. There is a clear need for customers to be able to track payments, monitor the Jamiyah’s progress and automate monthly payments being made to each participant. ila’s version preserves this widely loved saving tradition and enables friends and family to collectively save in a playful digitized manner.
