Challenge faced by the client and why it came to Qarar

Our client held a strong position in Kuwait as one of the oldest and leading financial services providers in the country, second only to the national bank. In order to re-emphasize its reputation as the preferred lender, in terms of services and reliability, the bank wanted its origination function to be evaluated for improved efficiencies, cost optimization, reduction in bad debt and overall profitability.

The solution provided by Qarar

Qarar utilized its domain expertise while its consultants conducted an on-site information gathering exercise to assess the current state of the various processes within the new customer originations function. The information gathering exercise focused on reviewing all aspects of origination using Qarar’s OPIT approach – Operations, Policies, Information and Technology.

The exercise involved interactions with all key stakeholders managing each of the processes, with detailed sessions around the challenges faced, and key priorities for each. These covered the overall process flows, policy and procedure manuals, resource management and the various systems in use. The use and availability of bureau information were also evaluated in line with regulatory and compliance framework.

Once the information was collated across each of the above functions, areas of concern were highlighted along with tangible recommendations to address these issues. Some of the key recommendations were explained through illustrations, giving guidelines on how to address the highlighted issues. Acknowledging the fact that resources and budget were constrained, Qarar differentiated between high priority recommendations and those that were of lesser importance. This was achieved by taking each of the recommendations across the four pillars and summarising them based on the impact, level of complexity and priority of implementation.

With all the information gathered, and detailed discussions with the management committee, each of the processes within the origination function was benchmarked against local and global best practices. Finally, a strategic delivery roadmap with an action plan was provided to the client with timelines, dependencies, followed by cost estimates for recommendations that were of high importance, but easy to implement.