Being one of the fastest growing capital markets, the financial institutes in the Middle East are regularly looking for more and more practical solutions to the operational challenges in the banking and financial sector. The need to achieve operational excellence has become a major objective in the agenda of this sector.

According to Mr. Aref Qambar, COO - Eskan Bank Bahrain, the major challenges faced by the industry pertaining to operations include managing and meeting the expectations of all stakeholders in terms of response time and results achieved. Changes in technology, impacts of competition, getting qualified human capital and retaining them, changing regulations, constant improvement towards efficiency and productivity with a better cost and resource management are some of the crucial limitations that effect the sector.

When asked about what would be the changing responsibilities of a COO in devising state of the art strategies for operational excellence, Mr. Qambar suggests Employing new technologies to do things differently, Reviewing of processes and applying changes, Training the personnel with an aim of service excellence amongst many other key issues.

Incorporating a continual process improvement model in the change management of banking operations has become a necessity. Mr Qamar suggests methods such as process re engineering and standardized policies, reduced complexity and duplications across products and services for the same. He also suggests to implement quality measurement tools and benchmarking with competitors in the industry. Implementation of Service Level Agreements (SLA's) within internal business and external service providers along with effective DR site and frequent onsite testing are other methods proposed by him.

Mr. Qambar is a key speaker at the 10th Annual OPEX Middle East – Financial COO Event of the Year, which is taking place on te 18th and 19th November, 2014, at the Habtoor Grand Beach Resort & Spa Hotel Dubai, UAE, . The event will stage many more speakers from the financial industry in the middle east, who will present intriguing case studies, interactive discussions and knowledge sharing presentations in order to determine solutions to the operational challenges faced by the industry.

Sponsored by global solution providers such as Veripark, Loxon Solutions Ltd, Newgen Software, Network Internations LLC, Finesse, the event will feature sessions on topics such as technology as a tool to leverage operational efficiency; Changing Regulatory Framework; tackling increasing needs of Transactional Banking from Corporate Clients and many more.