Kuwait Finance House (KFH) inaugurated the Leadership Excellence Program in partnership with Headspring, the joint venture between IE Business School and the Financial Times, to support the learning and growth journey of KFH’s leaders.

Besides the Leadership Excellence Program participants, the event was attended by Chief HR Officers from Kuveyt Turk and Ahli United Bank Kuwait, in addition to Headspring Chief Relationship Officer, Vice President Corporate Partnerships MENA, and FT Journalists.

In his welcome speech, KFH Group Chief Human Resources Officer, Zeyad Abdullah AlOmar, said “it gives me great pleasure to welcome you all as we gather here today to inaugurate the yearly Leadership Excellence Program in partnership with Headspring”, indicating this series of leadership programs will be a good base to help solidify the link as a “One” unified KFH Group.”

“KFH Group is the leader in the markets we operate in. As we continue this journey as banking pioneers, we are required to continue serving our customers in the best way possible, challenge the banking norms, innovate, and be agile while doing all of this,” AlOmar added.

Speaking to the participants of the program across KFH Group, AlOmar said: “You have corporate aspirations to meet, a successful story to live up to, and most importantly a banking legacy to continue. Leadership comes with responsibilities, firstly, a responsibility towards yourself, through committing to continued development, using all the tools and opportunities available to do so. In addition, as leaders, you have a collective responsibility to empower and inspire those around you, fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth amongst the teams you lead and more importantly guiding jointly all the Group to achieve the corporate aspirations that has been set.”

AlOmar pointed out that KFH firmly believes in investing in its leaders where KFH prioritizes the continued development of its leaders by equipping them with the latest thinking, approaches, and learnings available.

AlOmar indicated the Leadership Excellence Program has been tailored based on data and insights born out of previous program instances, capitalizing on numerous one-on-one sessions with KFH Group Leadership to obtain the core focus areas and topics, infused with the latest thinking in the banking industry, and are based on relevant topics to the times we currently operate in as an integrated KFH Group.

AlOmar said to the participants “the effectiveness of the programs mainly lies with you. I urge all of you as KFH Leaders to immerse yourself in the program. Work on learning and more importantly, log and jot down how you will apply that learning in our Group operations. Learning opportunities not only comes from our program leads from Headspring, but also comes from your colleagues around you. Learning and engaging with each other will surely reap many benefits for us across the Group which will start in this program but surely continue thereafter.”

KFH Executive Manager - Talent Management Mohammed Al-Musalam

Meanwhile, during a discussion panel held as part of the inauguration ceremony of the program, KFH Group Executive Manager - Talent Management Mohammed Al-Musalam said that “KFH tackles the retention of its’ Talent following a multiple dimension approach, indicating that KFH takes the engagement and enablement of its talent very seriously where it tracks this through an Annual Employee Survey to measure how engaged and enabled KFH employees are compared to banking peers, and global entities. Al-Musalam added that continuous review and action planning is applied to help further improve engaging and enabling KFH employees which has resulted in a highly engaged workforce with turnover / attrition rates lower than our peers.”

Al-Musalam added “KFH provides a differentiated value proposition in all the markets we operate in. Associating with the Brand, the culture, the story, the leadership in the banking products we offer, multiple progression opportunities within the organization, gives our employees a lot to bank on from a value perspective. We continuously work on emphasizing that associating with KFH as a brand comes with responsibility, but we see our leaders always rising to that.”

Discussing the linkage between the drive for leadership development at the KFH Group level vs. the strategic objectives, Al-Musalam explained: “As the banking leader in the markets we operate, and as we continue this leadership, our leaders are continuously being challenged to maintain and enhance our status within the markets we operate in. With the constant changes be it from typical market competitors or from new market entrants (FinTech’s) our leaders are always up on their feet to continue leading the way for this industry. This challenge requires us to prioritize their development, which happens on a yearly basis for our leaders based on a special development track. Al-Musalam added thatthe Talent Development team invests a significant part of their time to further enhance this development track, assess its effectiveness, refresh it with the latest thinking to expand the scope of our leaders.”

KFH Leadership Excellence Program - Years of continuous development for our KFH Leaders

About KFH Leadership Excellence Program: The Leadership Excellence Program is the flagship program designed to equip KFH Leaders with the tools and latest thinking to enhance their effectiveness as Leaders. This year, KFH has focused on further enhancing the program where it now covers 50 KFH Group Leaders from our respective entities and including Ahli United Bank. In addition, the program ensures that both levels covered under the program are interlinked and allows our Leaders in both levels to interact and work together towards solving the challenges as part of the program. All KFH Group Leaders went through an intricate selection process to ensure KFH talent pipeline is further supported with this new cohort.