Steve Troop has spent more than three decades in leadership roles in the financial services industry and has far-reaching international experience in retail and branch banking, corporate lending and relationship management, investment banking, insurance, operations and support services.
Could you provide a brief journey of how you arrived where you are today?
I came down from Cambridge University in 1979 and worked for HSBC for many years, in a wide variety of roles in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, South America and Europe. In 2007, I was appointed as the chief operating officer for Saudi Hollandi Bank in Riyadh and then joined Barwa Bank in Qatar in September 2010. It has been an interesting journey covering many different markets around the world and most aspects of financial services management. I try, wherever I can, to leverage and share that experience in my current role.
What does your role involve?
The principal roles are leadership and the implementation of our strategy for growth, a strategy designed to deliver our commitment to becoming the ‘most recommended’ Shariah compliant bank. I also try and spend as much time as possible with our major customer relationships as well as communicating with my colleagues, looking at new opportunities, ensuring that our risk-management processes are robust, communicating with my colleagues and interacting with key stakeholders.
What is your greatest achievement to date?
Barwa Bank is very young, remains a work-in-progress and we try not to spend too much time reflecting on our achievements. However, I do think that the way in which we have been able to move from start-up operating losses to sustainable profitability in under a year has been quite remarkable. This is, in part, due to a benign environment and a rapidly growing economy but, more importantly, a reflection of the extraordinary commitment and determination shown by a team of highly capable professionals.
Which of your products/services deliver the best results?
We made early progress in corporate and business banking and these remain our core revenue generators though I am encouraged by the rapid development of our retail footprint. Building a personal financial services business always takes time but we are confident that we are doing the ‘right’ things, a view reinforced by regular customer feedback.
What are the strengths of your business?
A start-up provides ‘a clean sheet of paper’ and the absence of legacy (be it ageing systems, problematical portfolios, customer perceptions around the brand or expensive infrastructure) is a clear advantage and allows us to innovate and experiment In addition, we try to turn our size to our advantage. We have a flat hierarchy and pride ourselves on speed-of-decision-making and execution, an aspect of our approach that is appreciated by our customers.
What are the factors contributing to the success of your company?
We are a very young organization and a recent entrant to a very congested market-place; there is no appetite for another ‘me-too’ bank. Differentiation is an imperative, not an option. That is both challenging and, at the same time, enormously liberating. We have chosen service as a point-of-competition, a desire to wrap the bank around our customers.
We are never going to be a multi-branch, mass market network as those segments markets are already well provided for, but we do feel there’s space for a focused bank that looks at service for a selective customer base.
What are the obstacles faced in running your business today?
In many ways, our ‘product’ is the people we put in front of our customers. Ensuring that we find, attract, recruit, train, develop, motivate and retain the best people, both Qatari and expatriate, is a recurrent challenge and one on which we spend a great deal of time.
Looking forward, growth itself creates obstacles: retaining customer intimacy and speed of decision-making in a larger organization, with its inevitable layers of management and governance requirements, is never easy but we must do so if we wish to retain this point of differentiation.
Where do you see the Islamic finance industry in the next five years?
I think the future is very positive for the Islamic finance industry. The growth rates for Shariah compliant financial services continue to out-pace those in the conventional industry, a trend that we see continuing and one that will accelerate as the industry builds out product and service propositions that offer credible alternatives.
Name one thing you would like to see change in the world of Islamic finance.
For me, it would be the widespread misconception that Islamic finance involves an implicit trade-off between, on the one hand, financial services provision based upon Shariah and, on the other, sophistication and service excellence. The two are not mutually exclusive and never have been; and we try to deliver both.