

Al Salam Bank Provides Financial Lifelines for Customers
Al Salam Bank uses OutSystems to deliver innovative internal applications and omnichannel CX solutions while meeting crucial Shari’a requirements.
anb—an OutSystems customer since 2018—has accelerated its digitalization journey with award-winning results. The bank uses OutSystems to deliver its new digital solutions. anb’s achievements include making loan origination three times faster, mortgage applications 64 percent faster, and launching a new mobile banking app in less than four months, currently used by over one million customers.
At the 2021 Global Finance Magazine Awards, anb won the prestigious “Best Digital Bank Award”, under the Best Mobile Banking App category in Saudi Arabia.
Established by royal decree in 1979, anb is now one of the largest banks in the middle east. The bank serves over two million customers with a comprehensive range of Retail, Commercial, and Investment banking services.
“Due to our digital-first approach, we have succeeded to accelerate our digital transformation strategy and became a market leader, taking advantage of the OutSystems solutions for digital development.”
Until recently, customers' banking experience involved face-to-face interaction via 136 branches, 10 sales centers, 83 remittance centers, 11 SME centers, and 4 corporate branches. However, to adapt to an ever-increasing digital world, anb chose to invest in its digital channels.
"Customers don’t need to leave the comfort of their homes, even when buying a house, as our new mortgage application system is fully integrated with government and private sector services."
The bank launched its digital transformation journey to meet increasing customer demand for digital self-service and in response to the Government’s sustainability agenda—“Saudi Vision 2030.”
From a sustainability standpoint, all banks need to digitalize customer touchpoints to minimize the environmental impact caused by face-to-face banking.
anb selected OutSystems to accelerate its digital transformation. The bank was determined to provide customers with seamless, user-friendly digital experiences on web and mobile platforms.
OutSystems was a natural choice, as low-code would accelerate development, and its enterprise-grade security and scalability would ensure anb could deliver and easily maintain finance-grade solutions.
“Customers are increasingly opting for online and mobile banking to manage their money and personal finances. By using OutSystems, we enabled our customers to apply for credit cards, personal loans, or mortgages online. Customers don’t need to leave the comfort of their homes even while buying a house as the system is fully integrated with third parties, including government and private sector services.”
With OutSystems, anb’s developers just need a single skillset to deliver all kinds of applications, including web, mobile, and back-end services. And the team has already delivered a wide variety of systems, including:
With OutSystems, anb found a high-performance low-code application development platform that was easy to implement, quick to learn, scalable, and secure. Additionally, over the past four years, the bank has used OutSystems to build all its digital systems.
“We noticed that some competitors faced challenges to introduce digital-first services, due to legacy products that are hard to update and integrate. However, OutSystems accelerated our digital transformation journey with quick time to market and allowed fast turnaround for the products and services.”
Notable successes include:
Additionally, the Saudi Government selected anb to launch Aramco’s IPO, valued at 1.5 trillion dollars. anb delivered a digital platform to streamline the IPO subscription process. Having proven its success, the bank has expanded the platform to support IPOs from multiple organizations.
"Developing innovative digital banking solutions, enabled anb to consolidate its competitive edge, increase market share and enrich its customer experience. Accordingly, the Best Mobile Banking App award came as a result of extended preparations and hard work to empower the bank’s digital platform strategy."
anb also used OutSystems to build its complete credit engine. “We chose to build our credit engine with OutSystems instead of buying it off-the-shelf,” explains Nora S. Almonif, Head of Development at anb. “Using OutSystems enabled us to customize it to our needs and go live in just a month, avoiding many constraints. We know that some of our competitors struggle with their legacy products, which are hard to update and integrate with new systems.”
Commenting further on the bank’s recent award win, Naif Alharbi, Chief Information Officer of anb, said, “From the outset of our digital transformation journey, we’ve always sought to invest in cutting-edge technology and creative solutions. These make the banking experience easier, faster, more efficient, and more flexible to keep pace with rapid changes in customer needs.”
Looking ahead, with OutSystems, anb has the speed and agility to excel in that vision.