Kuwaiti dailies announced this week that starting from July, all clients whao fail to update their civil information with their banks will be charged KD 1 for not providing their latest data. The Central Bank said in an official statement that the fee will only be taken from clients who don’t respond to their bank’s reminders to provide updated contact information to their local branches.

There is no doubt that the real measure of the quality of bank services is reflected by customer satisfaction and the speed of completion of their financial needs and the efficiency in protecting their banking information and confidentiality.

Therefore, I think that updating automated systems and information in the banking sector and the modernization of all existing systems and programs can easily contribute to facilitating all transactions to comply with the latest global systems.

Although many countries in the world, especially the United States and a number of European countries, still rely heavily on regular mail, in Kuwait we have adopted the phone between the customer and the bank as an easy way to communicate, and the home address as per the civil ID for the collection of rights and access to services.

I think the services of all the banks in Kuwait are good in general, but they need constant and continuous development, especially since the banking sector is competing in terms of service delivery or lending. So attracting new customers is no longer very easy in a small market and competitive one too.

So I think that banks must send early messages to all clients about the need to update their info in order to facilitate their access to banking services and products to avoid any additional and possible fees. Also, media campaigns and social tools are required to remind people to not ignore the matter, whether intentionally or not.

I think it is better for bank customers in Kuwait, whether citizens or expatriates, to speed up the updating of civil data with the banks in which they have accounts in order to avoid paying extra money from July, especially if they have more than one account in more than one bank.

By Muna Al-Fuzai

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