UNB launches campaign to encourage Egyptian expatriates to transfer money to Egypt

Union National Bank Egypt (UNB), in cooperation with its parent group in UAE, launched a campaign called “Transfer your money to your beloved in Egypt”.

The service allows the bank’s clients in the UAE to transfer money without any fees. The free bank transfers are in US dollars and Egyptian pounds. This service originated because of the bank’s interest in supporting the Egyptian economy and providing better services for its clients.

According to the bank, the campaign will last until June 30, to provide better services for Egyptians living in the UAE by easing the transfer operations process to their relatives and friends in Egypt.

The bank also offers a group of incentives to encourage Egyptians living in the UAE to transfer their money. The person sending money can enter drawings to win a prize, such as round trips to Egypt as well as free stay in Egyptian hotels.

The bank said in a statement that the campaign is in line with the bank’s strategy, which aims to diversify its products to meet the clients’ needs. The campaign allows the clients to communicate with their families and loved ones constantly, while benefiting from the bank’s services in Egypt through more than 40 branches nationwide.

With the aim of encouraging Egyptian transfers, UNB-Egypt also developed its SMS service to include clients outside Egypt through UNB-instant service.

UNB-UAE also provides unprecedented services in this matter, all of them help in offering competitive services for those working abroad to transfer their savings easily. These services include a technical part through UNB-PAY, which electronically connects UNB-Egypt with UNB-UAE or through easing transferring procedures.

The bank aims to reach a higher level of satisfaction among its clients and encourage them to transfer their money at a minimum cost and in record time. UNB-INSTANT allows account holders to observe their accounts constantly, which will contribute in developing their transactions.

The UNB group has branches in Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, and China as well as correspondent banks all over the world, which make it the perfect channel to manage expatriates’ savings and transactions. It is an efficient link between them and their mother country.

As part of its expansion plan, UNB recently opened nine new branches in Sohag, Banha, Damanhour, Shebin El-Koum, Minya, Zamalek, Heliopolis, Maadi, and Mohandeseen. These branches were opened in less than two months, bringing the number of bank branches to 41.

Moreover, the bank plans to open two new branches before the end of Q1 of 2016, in addition to launching a number of new services and products to meet the different needs of the customers.

The bank decided to launch the governmental bills payment service, UNB-Utility, that enables customers to pay all their monthly bills through the bank. The bank also offers the option to conduct all banking transactions through phone, UNB-IVR, and through SMSs, UNB-Instant.

The bank aims to provide a number of diversified services and meet all the needs of its varied customer base, in addition to funding the small and medium projects. The bank will achieve this via its geographical expansion plans, its ATMs network, and its phone banking services.

UNB-Egypt was the first commercial bank in the Egyptian market to obtain the certificate of Integrated Management System (IMS) from M/s Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) Ltd. The certificate comprises of three standards: ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001.

2015 was a significant year for UNB. The bank obtained the certificate of Excellence in Business Leadership from the American Liberty University. In addition, it was awarded the Best Business Leader Award certificate as one of the Most Influential Business Leaders in the Middle East, North Africa & Asia Markets.

The bank was also awarded the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award Diamond Category for the second time; the bank is the first institution in the Emirates to obtain this award two times in a row.

As for the social aspect, UNB-Egypt participated as the main sponsor of Dar Al Maaref’s 125 year celebration in 2015.

In order to develop its risk measurement methods, UNB-Egypt contracted with the well-known Bloomberg to provide services of Value at Risk (VAR), which are along the same lines as their newest international measures.

Source: Daily News Egypt

Date and Time: 23/01/2016, 14:30GMT

Read More

Climbing The Cross-Border Mountain

While there may be a trillion dollar cross-border commerce opportunity out there ready for the taking, the move to actually tap into the market is not as easy as it looks. Hikmet Ersek, CEO of Western Union, sat down with MPD CEO Karen Webster to discuss how the cross-border market is evolving and how decades of investment in compliance and risk management is a mountain too tall for most others to easily scale.

The cross-border market may in fact be lucrative, but getting there is no easy feat.

The act of moving money from Point A to Point B may seem simple, but Ersek pointed out that when that movement is happening across borders, it can easily take as many as 112 steps.

From having the right licenses in place to dealing with regulation from all sides, and also ensuring transactions are authenticated and secure with anti-money laundering and fraud controls – transferring money globally is hard work that is often underestimated.

Essentially, it costs money to move money.

Many businesses, especially those whose core business isn’t payments, are quickly learning that the journey to cross-border payments is ripe with a unique set of challenges.

But in reality, many of the companies looking to take advantage of the opportunities cross-border can bring just want to enable payments. As Webster noted, it’s unrealistic to expect these businesses to transform into payments players — frankly, it’s just too hard.

Ersek said that as companies begin to realize how many customers they would like to serve around the world and do their homework about how to go about it, they immediately realize the challenges they face if they wanted to build out a set of cross-border payments capabilities.

“The complexity of the business has definitely been our competitive advantage as well as the uniqueness of understanding the business,” Ersek explained. “The investments made over the years in our IT systems, compliance systems and changing our settlement systems have turned out to be the real stability of our business and now a barrier to entry for others.”

Back in November, Western Union announced its partnership with WeChat, Tencent’s popular messaging app, to allow cross-border payments for U.S. users to more than 200 countries and territories through Western Union’s WU Connect service. The technology platform integrates with consumer messaging and social media platforms, like WeChat’s extensive network of users, to facilitate money transfers throughout the world.

Ersek said that Western Union’s service with WeChat, which he described as being like “Venmo for cross-border,” is still in beta testing at this time. The partnership will enable lower-value, ad hoc transactions, which supports use cases for a variety of people that send money at different frequencies.

As Western Union continues its efforts to be seen as more than just a money transfer company, Ersek said it plans to serve other brands like WeChat in order to grow its business in different customer segments.

With more and more businesses making the decision to throw their hats into the global cross-border money movement ring, Ersek expects those companies will look to Western Union as a partner in enabling cross-border payments. “Why would they want to go through the time and the pain in every single country to set up banking licenses, when they can leverage our platform, operations and competency to make cross-border payments happen for them?”

The company now operates in 16,000 corridors. And keeping money moving safely and conveniently has taken a great deal of time and effort over the last 20 years, Ersek explained.

“Most of the money is good money, but one transaction can destroy your reputation,” Ersek pointed out. Which is why the company devotes nearly 25 percent of its 10,000 person workforce to compliance and ensures its systems are constantly upgraded and checked.

Ersek said he is optimistic about the growth Western Union will have in 2016 and expects much of that to come from digital and mobile initiatives as the business continues to move into payments services.

“I feel quite comfortable that we have the right platform for the future,” he stated. “In the past we were seen as just a remittance or money transfer company and that has definitely changed. We are a financial technology company moving value cross-border in seconds.”

Source: PYMNTS.COM

Date: 09/01/2015

Time: 13:18

Read More