KPMG report: Banking CEOs shift focus to customer-centric technology & data security

The latest KPMG Banking Pulse Quarterly, with the financial performance of 10 listed Saudi banks, presents insights from the firm’s recent CEO Outlook Pulse Survey, which includes the interviews of 60 bank CEOs from around the world. The survey provides a timely snapshot into CEOs’ expectations on business growth resumption, the impact of vaccine roll-outs, evolving organizational requirements, and business transformation priorities.

While COVID-19 certainly brought disruption to the financial services sector in the Kingdom, the sector has weathered the storm well, and has thrived again from a financial performance perspective. Khalil Ibrahim Al-Sedais, office managing partner — Riyadh at KPMG in Saudi Arabia, said: “Although we have been experiencing our fair share of trials and tribulations over the past year, we clearly see a bright future for Saudi Arabia’s banking industry which performed better than it ever has over the past year. With the sector’s total assets crossing SR3 trillion ($800 billion) and total deposits approaching the SR2 trillion mark, generally the banking system is in great shape.”

The survey indicates that 45 percent of CEOs globally envision their companies’ return to normality

sometime in 2022. Furthermore, the survey found that 56 percent of bank CEOs have a newfound appetite for M&A (mergers and acquisitions) — and the recently concluded merger between SAMBA and NCB may pave the way for further consolidation in the Kingdom’s banking sector.