Following the expats

The banks are offering a wide range of services to Lebanese expatriates such as deposits, loans, payment cards, and mobile banking applications. For a long time the banks have been focusing on expatriates, especially as a major source of deposits. They continue to launch worldwide campaigns to attract deposits from the Diaspora. The banks are also tapping digital technology to enable emigrants to check their local account and carry out transactions from their host countries. Further advances in digital technology will help boost banking activities, including the services provided to expatriates, as transactions will become cheaper, faster, and easier.

LOCAL ACCOUNTS A PRIORITY

The banks value the expatriate segment of their customer base highly as they consider it a promising source of revenue. This category of clients outperformed the resident segment of customers in 2018 both in terms of deposits and loans. According to , Head of Retail and Marketing at Banque Libano-Française (BLF), the banks offer incentives to expatriates to encourage them to open bank accounts, Deputy General Manager-Retail Banking at BLOM Bank, said that local banks offer comparatively attractive interest rates and this encourages expatriate clients to deposit their money in Lebanon. Deposits held by non-residents increased by seven percent while residents’ deposits grew by 1.7 percent. Non-resident deposits rose by $2.6 billion to $37.7 billion. This compares with a growth of $1.2 billion in the previous year. “Close to half of new deposits were accounted for by the non-resident sector, which accounts for 22 percent of the total deposit base in Lebanon against a share in growth of 19 percent in the previous year,” said Bank Audi in its ‘Lebanon Economic Report’ for 2018. Non-resident deposits in foreign currencies, which account for almost 90 percent of total non-resident deposits, grew by eight percent in 2018.