In 2017, Emirates NBD Group, a major banking team in the Center East, North Africa, and Turkey (MENAT), was confronted with an at any time-expanding demand from customers to give modern digital products and products and services in a really competitive sector. At that time, the banking group experienced powerful organization thoughts for flourishing even as its level of competition improved, but its IT supply experienced reached capability, so it could not put all its tips into follow. So the firm made a decision to execute a complete overhaul of its IT infrastructure and parallel features.
In this interview with McKinsey’s Henning Soller and Timo Mauerhoefer, Emirates NBD’s Neeraj Makin, team head of international and team technique, and Saud Al Dhawyani, main technology officer, make clear how the financial institution developed, quick-tracked, and carried out its IT transformation by using software programming interfaces (APIs) to at the same time speed up technological modernization and empower new business tips in excess of time.
McKinsey: Convey to us what influenced Emirates NBD Team to undertake its IT transformation in 2017.



Neeraj Makin: We run in quite competitive marketplaces and were faced with an expanding desire for digital alternatives for our clients. Although, at the time, we have been regarded in the location as a chief in digital answers and technological know-how, our technological know-how was sophisticated.
We experienced a number of distinctive technology stacks, and the integration amid our IT platforms was complex, which slowed us down and produced any variations to our engineering very high priced. Our core IT platforms were not aligned throughout our distinct destinations, triggering redundant work. Prime management was unsure no matter whether these places would continue to be lucrative.
Also, we experienced outsourced a good deal of vital IT abilities, such as our IT engineers. In this set up, we couldn’t respond to the raising desire for electronic options, these as conclusion-to-end electronic purchaser journeys, permit by itself leverage progressive banking technologies, such as advanced-analytics-based item offerings. We concluded that we essential to remodel our know-how to outperform our level of competition and continue to be a leader in electronic and technology.
McKinsey: How is your transformation distinctive from other companies’ technologies transformations?



Saud Al Dhawyani: Just one vital variance was that we adjusted all the things inside IT in parallel. While quite a few corporations concentrate on, for occasion, a core-banking-program migration or force cloud adoption or experiment with agile teams, we determined that to conduct a accurate quantum leap, we wanted to pull every single lever inside IT and completely renovate our main technology.
We upgraded our IT architecture by modernizing critical IT platforms and simplifying their integration. We optimized our IT infrastructure by creating the very first non-public-cloud system in the area, and we modernized our organizational composition, which enabled an agile functioning product. But we did not quit there. Constructing on the revamp of our main technological innovation, we formulated new digital capabilities, this kind of as robotics, good automation, and advanced analytics, to crank out the total business enterprise price of our transformation.
Modifying basically all elements of IT in parallel is a sophisticated effort and hard work, which is the rationale why a lot of other businesses sequence the initiatives in excess of a for a longer period time period. Nevertheless, in gentle of raising level of competition, we needed to be speedy and full our transformation inside four a long time. To adjust our IT estate in parallel, we experienced to very carefully design a modular architecture with different levels and decouple our core platforms in the first stages by means of APIs.
Given the complexity of this transformation, we realized that we would want to drastically enhance and exchange our present talent—this is a further key variation from other transformations. We did not get started any technological initiative right up until we experienced a important mass of new and upskilled expertise in spot.
McKinsey: What part do APIs participate in at Emirates NBD?
Saud Al Dhawyani: In 2017, ahead of we released our technologies transformation, we experienced few unstandardized APIs. Nowadays, APIs are at the main of our IT architecture and enjoy a major function in our digital method. Our technique is developed all around three critical components that are central to our API-centric architecture (exhibit).
Exhibit









The 1st component is known as Sahab, indicating “cloud.” It is a totally automated non-public-cloud platform that is the foundational system on which all our applications work. The 2nd we get in touch with Bawaba, indicating “gate.” This is our groupwide API system, which manages extra than 800 microservices and connects our channels, apps, and data system. It also includes our developer portal. Third is our organization-info system, which we phone Manara, that means “lighthouse.” Manara enables true-time knowledge exchange amid purposes, a critical feature that we did not have in the past.
With this drastic shift to APIs, we have considerably elevated our shipping and delivery performance and performance. For instance, the productiveness of our agile squads rose considerably after we released our interior developer portal, which will allow buyers to very easily look for for and handle all our APIs. This significantly lowers the integration endeavours among the diverse groups and purposes and decreases the duplication of functionalities by enabling reuse at scale.
APIs were being essential for our transformation simply because they allowed us to modularize our IT estate and modernize some of our core IT platforms, these kinds of as our payments hub and trade-finance IT platform. We now have practically the exact same “code base” for all entities and spots and can increase new functionalities efficiently. This also tends to make us far more adaptable in our intercontinental marketplaces, where our growth was traditionally minimal by our technologies abilities.
A distinct illustration of how our API-based mostly architecture right creates organization worth is via our retail assets. Working with APIs, we will be in a position to obtain and integrate different back-conclude capabilities and data to provide an straightforward way for our prospects to use our essential retail products and solutions, these as financial loans, playing cards, and home loans, in a self-services way on the net. APIs now allow for us to right away present credit history cards to our prospects, whereas, in advance of, that method required lots of guide checks and reviews. By way of our modular architecture, our retail assets will also be accessible for all our legal entities and spots.
From a organization viewpoint, APIs enabled a number of strategic business enterprise initiatives. In 2019, we released WhatsApp Banking for our prospects in a make a difference of months. Right now, we have 100,000 subscribed customers for Emirates NBD and 50,000 for Emirates Islamic, and we have found about a million interactions in the past 12 months. We now also have a devoted ecosystem and API workforce that identifies new small business prospects enabled by earning our data, products, and products and services obtainable through APIs.


McKinsey: Can you give us an illustration?
Neeraj Makin: Sure. We are collaborating with the Department of Financial system and Tourism (DET) on a blockchain task to supply licensing data. Although blockchain is the fundamental system that offers a one source of truth of verified providers as well as of unique knowledge and documents, we can interact with it as a result of the APIs we develop on Bawaba. These APIs make it possible for our small and medium-measurement enterprises and corporate clients to take in this ability as a services. This aligns with our philosophy of developing at the time, even though the APIs empower reusability.
We also supported noqodi, a main service provider of on the web technological know-how options in the Arab globe, with real-time transaction-processing capabilities to enable operational performance when spending its merchants and purchasers. We carried out three key services leveraging our APIs on Bawaba. Very first, fund transfer, which permits consumers to transfer dollars amongst Emirates NBD accounts locally and internationally. Second, transaction background, which presents buyers accessibility to a listing of new transactions. And 3rd, transaction-status inquiry, as a result of which consumers can get new specifics of a solitary transaction.
McKinsey: How did you method your API transformation?
Saud Al Dhawyani: We begun by building our target architecture blueprint based mostly on the three core platforms. We aimed for an approach to combine these platforms by means of APIs and to standardize our management of APIs for two most important factors: to start with, to prevent developing a elaborate integration, or “spaghetti architecture,” as we had in the previous, and next, to be more adaptable and in a position to extend our engineering by delivering sure platforms a faster, far more efficient way to exchange facts and information, or by integrating new alternatives from 3rd events, these kinds of as fintechs.
To prioritize our APIs, we structured the present providers we experienced on our company services bus (ESB) in common banking domains, these kinds of as client and item. We also prioritized particular nonbanking APIs as “common” or “channel engagement,” this sort of as campaigns, features, and optical character recognition (OCR) functionalities.
We then prioritized the solutions primarily based on relevance for our transformation—that is, when we would need to decouple just about every IT platform to drive the modernization—as perfectly as on their amount of complexity. Based on these criteria, we could improved realize what the total exertion of “API-zing” our IT architecture would be. Then we began to define the operating model and governance, in addition to detailing the API taxonomy, criteria, and recommendations. Final, we made a decision on the know-how solution for the API administration platform and other relevant elements and started off the 1st proof of strategy.
McKinsey: How did you construct momentum at that stage?
Saud Al Dhawyani: We outlined the value and possible of APIs for each engineering and small business to our management and devoted a sizeable section of the spending plan to it. We experienced original funding that was ample to lay the technological basis, define the required standards and guidelines, and migrate all our services from the legacy ESB to microservices obtainable via our conventional APIs. We now have roughly 800 microservices accessible.
This basis authorized us to build 3 agile squads that labored only on developing APIs in the unique domains. We kick-started off our API exertion by jogging quite a few API recognition classes in IT, and we also unfold consciousness among our organization colleagues to aid our staff have an understanding of the prospects.
To drive API adoption, it was crucial to carry out a consumer-welcoming developer portal with excellent documentation and enough look for functionalities. We looked for very best techniques across the globe. Furthermore, we invested in coaching our developers to familiarize them with the developer portal and with the API recommendations and standards correct from the starting. We required to lay the correct foundations so we could effortlessly scale when the time was right.
Immediately after original compact successes with the inner use instances and some external ones, the small business desire grew appreciably. They preferred further APIs—and they wished them quickly, so we created an agile budgeting and prioritization process to cater to the enhanced demand from customers.
McKinsey: What had been the greatest problems?
Saud Al Dhawyani: One of our greatest worries was to get the correct expertise to drive our API strategy. Wholly redesigning the integration architecture, placing up an API administration platform and developer portal, and constantly prioritizing the original API backlog are really sophisticated jobs. On the one hand, we wanted professional engineers who knew the technological information, and on the other hand, we required professional product homeowners to make certain a laser emphasis on the appropriate priorities.
In the starting, there were several issues about being ready to build up the expected expertise in Dubai, since tech talent is not commonly offered. Even so, we managed to do it by a balanced blend of choosing and producing our present expertise. A single key component to our achievement was developing focused understanding journeys for the distinct roles we wanted with a blend of inner and exterior programs as well as certification courses.
Later on in our journey, we faced the obstacle of increasing the productivity of our agile API squads. When we began, it was appropriate for our teams to provide a person API in two-to-3-week sprints. Even so, to comply with our road map, we essential to enhance our efficiency considerably. We leveraged DevOps automation tools to optimize the integration and maintain continuous deployment and shipping and delivery and doubled our API output.
McKinsey: Is there everything you would do in a different way if you were starting up once more?
Saud Al Dhawyani: Although our tactic of clustering and prioritizing the present ESB solutions was a good beginning point to limit our original scope, I would not comply with this technique without limitations. I would instead invest far more time detailing the concentrate on design of the domains and evaluate in far more depth which APIs allow the maximum small business value—though this absolutely does not indicate a reduction in IT integration expenses. I would also leverage current frameworks, these types of as the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN), as a great deal as feasible to better determine and prioritize the APIs that have larger organization price.
McKinsey: What are the advantages of your API endeavours? How do you quantify them?
Neeraj Makin: We have enabled a number of strategic business enterprise initiatives as a final result. 1 illustration is our electronic onboarding, which is readily available on cellular phones for self-service and by way of tablet for aid in our branches. We have onboarded extra than 100,000 buyers with our new system, performing up to 85 % with straight-by way of processing in significantly less than 10 minutes.
We have also executed various prosperous facts and analytics use situations that generate our small business effectiveness. For instance, as a result of our API-primarily based architecture, we had been ready to launch a new company and institutional banking portal—we contact it Small business Online—which is fueled by serious-time facts. With this software, we can present our company shoppers an quick overview of their payments, open letters of credits, and more—a company that is unparalleled in the area.
McKinsey: What key results aspects must other companies glimpse for when embarking on their have API journeys?
Neeraj Makin: When reflecting on the API transformation of Emirates NBD, we can obviously see three success components. The very first is to determine a apparent API system, aiming to optimize the amount of APIs as fast as doable and generate adoption with a consumer-pleasant API developer portal. 2nd, be positive to create the proper technological innovation environments in purchase to proficiently scale and optimize the team’s productivity—for example, as a result of employing cloud or DevOps. With standard nonautomated infrastructure setups, it is tough to comprehend the benefits of APIs. At last, there is talent. Acquiring the ideal engineers and solution house owners is critical to scaling an API-driven ecosystem. That requires a balanced blend of hiring new associates and upskilling present personnel.
