Al-Qudaibi pointed out that this rating reflects the bank’s high capital adequacy both at a regional and international level and its ability in maintaining good levels of liquidity. He added that this high rating is also attributed to the leading position the bank occupies in the banking sector, its sustained financial performance, strong asset quality, its conservative risk appetite supported by prudent risk management and effective management of its lending portfolio.
The rating reflects the bank’s broad customer base and its leading position in the Retail as well as the Corporate Banking market. It also demonstrates its well-executed strategy of focusing on its core activities in the retail and corporate banking areas and in providing an integrated series of banking, financial and investment products and services with added value that fulfills customers’ needs; in addition to the bank’s Islamic banking services which provide a complete set of Islamic banking solutions.
Al-Qudaibi has also indicated that one of the key elements of the bank’s strategy is to grow its return on equity in the long run, continuously enhance the Bank’s infrastructure of highly sophisticated systems and develop the skills and know-how of its Human Resources strength and improve the level of its sophisticated electronic services and products through its well established IT platform
The bank has continued to maintain its high credit rating, as Fitch, the international rating agency, has given the bank, in March 2011, an (A+) rating for long-term obligations, and (F1) rating for short-term obligations with a ‘Stable’ future outlook. The bank has also managed to maintain the (AA-) rating for long-term obligations and (A+), for short-term obligations from Capital Intelligence (CI).
