Power Letters 2024: Nasser Al Awadhi, group CEO of ADIB

The year 2023 has been pivotal, marked by a concerted drive towards impact, innovation, and sustainability. It served as a transformative period, underscoring the significance of change, particularly in terms of sustainability.

It was another strong year as we continued to build upon the momentum of last year’s progress with even more ambitious goals and targets. Having repeatedly exceeded our ROE targets, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) is on track to deliver a successful 2024 while continuing our focus on digital innovation and sustainability. As a leading Islamic financial institution, we are uniquely positioned to deliver innovative financial solutions that incorporate ESG principles.

ADIB will continue to work towards creating value for all our stakeholders in pursuit of our vision to become the world’s most innovative Islamic bank. We will continue to prioritise innovation, sustainability, digital excellence, and our segment-focused approach to drive forward progress on the implementation of the bank’s strategy. As always, we remain true to our purpose of being a lifelong partner for our clients, community, and colleagues.

ADIB has always taken a proactive approach to conduct responsible business, which is why to solidify our commitments, we invested in a robust three-year ESG strategy that has continued to generate mutual benefits to all our stakeholders, especially in the social and environmental fields. Our efforts have led us to be recognised as the best bank in the UAE, and the safest Islamic bank globally. This reflects our commitment to upholding the trust of our customers and ensuring that we continue to seamlessly provide for all their banking needs.

For us, ESG is not just a criterion to be considered, it is a core component of Islamic financing that is ingrained in the DNA of the bank. The year of sustainability in sync with COP28 shone a light on the growing demand for sustainable financing, which has always aligned with Islamic principles. Therefore, our commitment to maximising our positive impact on society extends far beyond COP28.

In the last quarter of 2023, under the sustainable finance framework, we also issued the world’s first-ever USD-denominated green sukuk issued by a financial institution. The $500m issuance was more than five times oversubscribed, attracting over 100 global and regional investors. Global demand for green financial instruments is growing rapidly, and the success of this issuance demonstrates clearly that financial institutions must keep pace with this demand. In addition to the green sukuk, we also issued in July a $750m tier-one perpetual sukuk, which was over nine times oversubscribed.

ADIB focused on achieving net zero operations

ADIB is further committed to achieving net zero by 2050 in alignment with the UAE’s climate goals. We are working towards baselining our portfolio and operational emissions, a critical step towards setting quantitative decarbonisation targets. The process is expected to be completed in the first half of 2024, allowing us to define robust decarbonisation objectives as we contribute to the regional shift towards sustainability. ADIB is actively working on prioritising substantial investments in renewable energy, clean technology, and eco-friendly projects, fortifying our role in tackling climate change.

Placing our customers at the forefront of our digital initiatives, we have expanded our digital offerings. Throughout 2023, we introduced 19 new services accessible via our mobile app. Presently, 80 per cent of our customers actively use the bank’s digital platforms.

We expect to continue our strong performance in 2024, aided by a positive economic outlook for the GCC. We are optimistic about the future and dedicated to capitalising on our successes.