Leaders of Egypt’s finance industry talk interest rates and financial inclusion: Some of Egypt’s top finance industry figures sat down with The Banker Magazine to offer their take on everything from the success of the Sisi administration’s reform drive to monetary policy and financial inclusion. Among those appearing in the magazine’s April issue (pdf) are our friends CIB Chairman Hisham Ezz Al Arab and EFG Hermes CEO Karim Awad. In a nutshell, the piece relays the optimism the Egyptian banking and financial sector for the future.

On monetary policy: “We need [interest rates] to move about another 400 bps so credit can start to flow more easily,” Ezz Al Arab said. “Lower interest rates are needed now and this will happen naturally,” he added. EFG Hermes research, meanwhile, expects to see a further 300 bps reduction over the remainder of the year. “If that does happen then the stock market should rally as all companies with leverage on their balance sheet will see an [aggregate] 400 bps fall in the cost of financing that debt,” says Awad.

On financial inclusion: It is perhaps not surprising that of all the banking MDs interviewed, Ezz Al Arab had the most to say, considering CIB is leading the way on this. Overall, he feels like there has to be a regulatory shift on issues such as permitting digital rather than paper archiving of documentation. “We have revamped our internet banking and mobile application to make them more user friendly. We are trying to get more customers to use those channels,” says Ezz Al-Arab.

Speaking on the future of inclusive banking, Ezz Al Arab is championing data analytics and artificial intelligence. “We are building the necessary data infrastructure to figure out how we can extract value [from existing operations] and how can we develop new business in the future. One of the models we are developing is an artificial intelligence model for early warning signals covering credit stress. We are trying to use historical data to build a model that automatically alerts the bank when a credit file is under stress, rather than using a credit officer to go through all the paperwork.”