Burgan Bank holds its 55th Annual General Assembly meeting

Burgan Bank held its 55th Ordinary Annual General Assembly meeting on Sunday, 6th June 2021 at KIPCO Tower, with a quorum of 84.5%.

The Board of Directors of the bank submitted to its shareholders the financial results achieved for the past year ending on December 31, 2020, which reflected the bank’s ability to maintain resilient revenues while delivering on its strategic initiatives despite the unprecedented challenges. The bank’s shareholders approved the distribution of dividend of 5 fils per share and 5% stock dividend. During the General Assembly, two non-independent Board Members were elected for this year, Ms. Entisar Al Suwaidi and Mr. Abdullah Mohammed Al-Mansour

During the meeting, Mr. Majed Essa Al-Ajeel, Burgan Bank’s Chairman highlighted that the bank has proved its resilience throughout these difficult times. The bank posted FY’20 Revenues of KD 212.8mn with stable levels of Non-Interest Income of KD 72.8mn, and expenses of KD 97.2mn falling by 5% and leading to Operating Profit of KD 115.5mn. Customer Loans and Advances grew by 1.4% to KD 4.3bn and Customer Deposits grew by 2.5% to KD 4.1bn. He also highlighted the Q4 successful issue of USD 500mn Tier 2 Capital securities, further strengthening the bank’s Capital Adequacy Ratio to 18.3%.

In a year of unprecedented change, Mr. Al-Ajeel touched upon Burgan Bank’s efforts to actively support its customers, employees and the community through a host of measures. These included postponement of loan installments for 6 months for retail clients and SME clients, deferral of interest servicing for corporate and private banking customers on a case-by-case basis and a smooth functioning of all client channels including 24/7 access to contact centers. Burgan has also established and committed to the highest level of health and safety standards throughout its network of branches, ATMs and offices.

Commenting on the bank’s focus on its strategy throughout 2020, Mr. Masoud M. J. Hayat, Burgan Bank’s Vice Chairman and Group CEO, highlighted the bank’s strategic key pillars which include human development, sustainability, digital transformation, and asset reallocation. He stressed on the bank’s long-term sustainability efforts and pointed out how the past year emphasized the utmost importance of sustainability in the way we do business. In implementing these goals, we have prioritized the focus on developing our human element that we consider the main pillar in putting our strategy in practice. We have therefore concentrated on reinforcing and empowering our talent pool by providing specialized learning and development opportunities.

Mr. Raed Al-Haqhaq, Deputy Group Chief Executive Officer & CEO- Kuwait of Burgan Bank, continued to highlight the bank’s strategic initiatives by focusing on its digital transformation journey. During 2020, Burgan’s online portal and mobile banking application underwent a major upgrade that was received with very positive clients’ feedback.  Burgan pursued its efforts to boost the Cybersecurity Framework given the increased usage of online channels, and to enhance the user access management with threat intelligence and monitoring. The bank has also launched the first of its kind merchant-only application in the region – Tijarati, and a new improved WhatsApp business service. Moving forward, many more important milestones are planned this year for our digital journey.