Kuwait Finance House Bahrain (KFHB) has unveiled Jazeel, a digital account opening and community-based platform.
Jazeel, which means great in Arabic, is smartphone application that will help onboard customers. The platform will allow customers across the Kingdom, and eventually in the GCC, to open a mudaraba (trust financing) based savings account and libshara (investment savings) account.
Through Jazeel, the bank introduces a digitised electronic know-your-customer (E-KYC) process where all customer information validation will be done online via video conferencing through the application. KFHB claims this will enable customers to open the account within minutes, without having to visit a branch.
It also provides a number of ‘specialised custom-made features’ including forensic documents analysis, digital documents scanning including signature, facial recognition, selfie checks, create digital identity and many more.
These features will allow for the ‘genuine verification’ of the documents scanned by the customer, via the application. Jazeel is currently available in Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
In February, Bahrain FinTech Bay, a FinTech hub for the Middle East and Africa, opened and announced its founding partners and some of its startups. The 28 founding partners are mixed of Bahraini and global financial services and technology companies, including American Express, Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait, Bahrain Islamic Bank, BNP Paribas, Cisco, Microsoft and PayTabs, among others.
In a recent interview with FinTech Global, Simon Galpin, Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) managing director, said FinTech can reposition Bahrain as a ‘pioneer’ in the global financial market.
He said, “What we lack in terms of scale, we are making up for in momentum. Things are changing very quickly in this region. One of the advantages of not being a first mover is the fact that you can learn from other people’s mistakes, and you can cherry pick some of the regulations that are clearly working in other parts of the world.”
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
Copyright © 2018 RegTech Analyst
