RAKBANK Business - Your Business Matters

Dear Valued Customer,

It gives me great pleasure to e-connect with you through the latest edition of Business Connect, our quarterly newsletter dedicated to serving our valued Business Banking customers. Essentially, Business Connect delivers updates on important economic developments and key initiatives undertaken by the Bank.

At the outset, I hope that each of our customers, their families, employees and businesses are safe and have managed to bounce back following the unprecedented thunderstorm and subsequent flooding during the month of April.

As you may be aware, we recently released our financial results for Q1 2024. Thanks to our robust and diversified balance sheet, strong sales momentum, and lower cost of funds, we accelerated our growth and achieved a record net profit of AED 629M with a record total income of AED 10B.

In addition to this impressive growth, we are proud to become the first bank in the GCC to publish our Social Finance Framework. This framework builds upon our ESG principles and commitment to contributing to the sustainable growth of the UAE economy through our continued support for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

We also launched the RAKBANK SME Confidence Index – a ground-breaking initiative in collaboration with RFI Global, a renowned authority in banking and finance intelligence. The index demonstrated that SMEs in the UAE have rebounded following the downward pressure placed on them during the Covid-19 pandemic. All industries exhibit an index score>50. You may click here to download the complete report.

On the partnership front, RAKBANK entered into a strategic partnership with Sharjah Publishing City Free Zone by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Our vision is to further support start-ups and champion entrepreneurship locally.

As part of our SME community engagement, we have organised a webinar on fraud awareness titled "Safeguard your Business against Fraud". The webinar delves into the present and emerging fraud threats that businesses may encounter, and what business owners can do to counteract them.

The SMEsouk podcast series is another initiative which features industry experts talking about the start-up ecosystem, taxation, government support and other relevant topics. The objective of the podcasts is to apprise our customers of the changing SME landscape in the UAE. We are building content that will help our SME community access information about topics relevant to their business. The episodes are available on SMEsouk.com as well as RAKBANK’s YouTube channel.

RAKBANK was recently recognised as the "MENA SME Bank of the Year" at MEED's MENA Banking Excellence Awards 2024. This accolade highlights our commitment to delivering innovative and user-friendly solutions to our valued customers.

At RAKBANK, our aim is to help your business reach its full potential through the right financing solutions and services that we have made readily available. Please take the time to read our newsletter. We hope that you find the information useful.

Should you have any suggestions on how we can further enhance your banking experience with us, please write to us at businessbanking@rakbank.ae.

Kind regards,

Dhiraj Kunwar
Managing Director, Business Banking