The Largest Private Bank in Iraq on Maintaining the Market Leadership Position

Nozad Dawood Fattah Al-Jaff, Chairman of North Bank, largest private bank in Iraq talks about the strategy to maintain the position of market leader. North Bank is the largest bank in the private banking market in terms of market capitalisation and asset.

According to Al-Jaff, “Our strategy is basically to work as hard as ever. We provide a lot of services for our customers. They are usually very happy with our services and with the fast decisions that we make regarding their demands, whether it be in opening accounts or providing guarantees or even giving them an indication of whether we are able to give them a loan. These decisions can be delayed for weeks in other banks. We are much faster in making these decision, which opens a lot of doors for us to potential clients.”

“We are the largest asset manager of funds in Iraq. We have given a lot of loans to a variety of sectors in Iraq from agriculture to housing as well as giving bridge loans and loans for fulfilling contracts. We have lot of big loans with the car industry and we have worked successfully with them in importing thousands of cars to Iraq to then sell them to the retailers in the market and to the end users.” Al-Jaff continues.

“To maintain the market leadership position the bank is now focusing on Baghdad, the centre of economic life in Iraq. North Bank has opened 5 new branches in Baghdad. Two-thirds of revenues are coming form the city. “usually most of this revenue comes from opening letters of credit and guarantees that tend to go to the Ministries and obviously most of the Ministries are headquartered in Bagdad. All the contracts we have are eventually signed in Bagdad and so clients in other parts of the country have to deal with the Ministries and headquarters that are in Bagdad. Therefore it is correct that two-thirds of our revenue comes from Bagdad but really it is because most of our business goes through our headquarters in Bagdad.”

Al-Jaff explains his position on Baghdad, “Bagdad has almost 7 million people and it is a very dynamic city. With all the problems it has, those 7 million people still have to go about their daily lives, they have to eat, they have to buy clothes, cars and houses etc. So there is a lot of activity there for us. We are planning to increase our branches from 5 to 10 in Bagdad in the next two years because there is need for them.”