I am proud to present the 2020 Integrated Report which documents our continuous efforts to transform into an agile and digitally enabled bank. In a year full of challenges, SAIB’s journey of transformation was more important than ever to see us through these challenging times.
Our Three-Year Strategy
In 2020, we embarked on a three-year strategy (2020 – 2022). With this new strategy, we aim to boost our performance and grow our long-term shareholder return on equity. The strategy is designed around five dimensions: Digitalization to support our business needs, develop our analytics capabilities, and streamline internal and customer processes; Agility to promote close collaboration between business and support functions that will allow us to have short product launch cycles; Innovation to promote innovative ideas and launch innovative products; Speed to utilise automation to increase efficiency and improve the customer experience; and Focus to create an exceptional customer experience for our targeted segments.
Our strategy relies on five key enablers: transforming our human capital, building an efficient organisation, strengthening our IT capabilities, strengthening our affiliates, and growing our innovation capabilities. Moreover, our strategy is aligned with the Kingdom’s Financial Sector Development programme in Vision 2030. The strategy is supported by our Transformation Group and Information Technology Transformation Strategy. Through the application of Agile and Six Sigma practices and enabling flexible infrastructure, the Bank took on several initiatives during 2020 to enable the successful implementation of the strategy including implementing several digitisation and automation methods and strengthening our IT capabilities and critical systems. The Bank will continue to undertake various improvement initiatives in the years to come to ensure that our business remains sustainable.
Our people
Our employees are our lifeblood and we have always invested in them and their engagement as a key strategic driver. Our Saudization ratio increased to 89% and our female employees represents 20% of our workforce. We also revised our learning policy to create optimal alignment with our strategic objectives and develop the digital capability of our employees.
Managing COVID-19
Thanks to the agility and responsiveness of our employees and the effectiveness of our Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and infrastructure, SAIB has successfully dealt with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. A dedicated committee to respond to the coronavirus was established to manage our transition to working from home and implement the necessary precautionary procedures to control the spread of the virus. We continued to develop our BCP and test our capabilities to ensure that we can tackle any unexpected scenarios swiftly and without affecting our operations. These efforts will continue well into 2021 and beyond.
We maintain a positive outlook for the years ahead. With the rollout of the vaccine, we expect to see a gradual return to normalcy albeit in a transformed environment. We are well placed with our strategy and our people to adapt swiftly to expected changes that may occur within our operating environment.
I would like to thank our stakeholders for their continued support, particularly our employees who have worked diligently through this pandemic. I extend my deepest gratitude to our Chairman and members of the Board of Directors for their guidance and trust in us during these extraordinary times.
Faisal Abdullah Al-Omran
Chief Executive Officer
