THE Islamic Development Bank (IDB), a multilateral development financing institution with 57 member countries as shareholders, is now fully delivering on its mandate to foster socio-economic development among its member countries, thanks in large part to the recent transformation of its core banking technology using SAP. IDB supports the growing Islamic finance, with a recent report by Dinar Standard predicting global Islamic banking assets will nearly double from $2 trillion in 2015 to $3.5 trillion by 2025. From project finance in the public and private sectors, to development assistance for poverty alleviation, IDB's systems require absolute transparency for more optimized project financing, sustainable processes that foster accountability, and enriched data analytics for faster decision making. Recognizing IDB's digital transformation success, IDB has won "Best Implementation" at the Banker Middle East Industry Awards 2017. Judges praised IDB for having recently launched $745 million in development projects across 56 member countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe, and aims to become a world-class development bank in the Muslim world by 2019 Ahmed Al-Faifi, Managing Director of SAP Saudi Arabia, said: "IDB has made a paradigm shift in the way that it approaches banking. The bank has gone from legacy systems to real-time in only a few years of working with SAP, and has saved tens of millions of Saudi riyals in the process. From analytics technology and development banking operations to finance and human resources, IDB is now operating on par with the world's very best banks." Optimizing processes while reducing risks is central to success for all financial institutions. IDB has increased the urgency to outperform stakeholder expectations, in line with the ambitious objectives of its member countries, Al-Faifi added. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, SAP counts more than 1,000 customers and more than 50 partners, and has localized solutions to more than 25 industries. In the Middle East, more than $1.6 trillion worth of banking assets run on SAP. By 2020, 70 percent of global high-tech revenue will be Digital Economy-related, according to SAP. Saudi Vision 2030 calls on the Kingdom to be a Digital Economy leader, with the pillars of (i) diversifying the economy and increasing productivity, (ii) reducing unemployment (iii) maximizing resources and improving quality of life (iv) developing an economy that is among the Top 15 economies, and (v) ranking Top 10 in the Global Competitiveness Index.
