KUWAIT: Continuing to invest in the human capital and increase employees’ efficiency, National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) organizes a series of lectures and workshops focusing on developing personal and practical skills in areas related to digital transformation, innovation, leadership and effective communication. In this context, the bank held the third of a 6-lecture series in September, which hosted 80 participants.

Delivered by Ricardo Perez, Professor of Information Systems, Innovation and Corporate Strategy at IE, the lecture covered the challenges for the banking industry post-digital and implications of the next generation of technologies. Understanding the developments in digital transformation and its implications for the banking industry is crucial as it directly affects setting policies, business strategies and plans in financial institutions so that they are able to keep pace with developments as they seek to achieve sustainable growth.

Najla Al-Sager

Speaking on this, Najla Al-Sager, Head of Talent Management, Group Human Resources at National Bank of Kuwait, said: “Investing in the human capital is instrumental in NBK’s strategies and culture, and a key focus for the bank’s endeavors to achieve sustainable growth and create a banking generation capable of occupying leadership positions in the future.” “At NBK, we firmly believe that efficient workforce is crucial to delivering high-quality banking services from different types, and that employees’ awareness of the changes and developments in the banking industry boosts this efficiency.

Therefore, today’s lecture comes within our endeavors to enhance the capabilities and skills of NBK human capital and provide them with top-tier training programs,” she noted. Al-Sager emphasized that NBK harnesses all its capabilities to help develop the career of its employees by providing the best-in-class training and development programs, in collaboration with the world’s most renowned educational institutions. Founded in 1973, IE Business School is one of the largest business schools in the world, consistently ranked among the top international educational institutions by international magazines and newspapers, Forbes, The Economist, Financial Times and Bloomberg.

Ricardo Perez

Ricardo Perez is the Academic Director of the Master in Digital Business at IE, and has participated and managed several research projects, with total funding of more than €1 million, in areas related to corporate innovation. During the last twenty years Ricardo has collaborated in education and consulting projects (mostly dealing with corporate innovation) with companies such as Inditex, Ikea, Banco Santander, Vodafone, SAP, Microsoft; and also with universities in the USA, Mexico, Brazil, and China.

Prof. Perez research is related to how digital technologies are impacting business models in retail, banking and telecom industries, and how these organizations can create organizational mechanisms and develop innovation capabilities to face the changes. He works with multinational corporations in four continents to apply and test these ideas.