How IBA are building a bank with a difference
What's it like to build a bank from the ground up? Dean Gillespie, CEO of Islamic Bank Australia, sits down with Mark Jones to explain how they are marketing Australia’s first Islamic bank on this episode of The CMO Show.
What's it like to build a bank from the ground up?
According to Dean Gillespie, CEO of Islamic Bank Australia, it’s not dissimilar to assembling complicated IKEA furniture, albeit on a very different scale.
Dean explains, “People always ask me, "Is it hard?" And it's like, "Well, it's not complex." There's complex and complicated, right? Complex is something that is strategically difficult, like a hard problem to solve.”
“Complicated is something like, it's quite easy. There are just lots of little steps. It's like putting together IKEA furniture,” Dean says.
The lots of little steps Dean refers to encompass thousands of complicated individual pieces that all need to be executed really well. It’s a challenge that takes time, especially when your bank functions demonstrably differently to all others in the country.
As Australia’s first Islamic Bank, IBA operates under a Sharia Council under Sharia Law - a very clear difference in the marketplace.
About the bank’s community of Muslim Australians, Dean explains it’s a growing segment, “It’s 3% of the population growing strongly every single year; no competitors; unmet need. Everyone's like, "We get it," straight away.
“Whenever I talk to investors, whether there Islamic banks overseas or even investors here in Australia, everyone gets the business straight away. It's a really easy business proposition to explain to people,” Dean says.
Working with the community is a key part of IBA’s strategy and Dean is ensuring the values are incorporated into their products and services. It’s a process to ensure brand and product development are tied to innovation and community.
Tune in to this episode of The CMO Show and get a glimpse into the strategy behind building a brand new bank.
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[Credits]
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The CMO Show production team
Producer – Candice Witton
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au
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[Transcript]
Participants:
Host: Mark Jones
Guest: Dean Gillespie
Mark Jones:
How do you keep things simple? Ironically, it’s a complex art!
It’s something we all face while navigating complicated ecosystems and landscapes. We need the detail to bring big ideas to life, but equally we need a relatively simple strategy that holds it all together.
Like starting a brand new bank, for example.
A new bank - means creating systems, technology and processes to support people. Then there are regulations and risks to deal with.
So how do you do get your head around complex tasks, yet distil concepts into something simple and elegant?
Mark Jones:
Hello friends, Mark Jones here.
Welcome to The CMO Show. It's great to have you with us.
Today my guest is Dean Gillespie, Chief Executive Officer at Islamic Bank Australia.
Dean is leading the charge of creating and launching a new Australian bank. It’s a bank that operates differently to any other here in Australia, the first Islamic Bank of Australia.
Dean shares how they’re entering the Marketplace, their branding journey and exactly what constitutes ‘Islamic Banking’ and the regulations surrounding it.
I hope you enjoy.
Mark Jones:
Dean, so great to have you on the show.
Dean Gillespie:
Thanks Mark. Great to be here. Really excited.
Mark Jones:
Now, Australia's Islamic bank. The first?
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
Begs the question, what is an Islamic bank?
Dean Gillespie:
That's a good question. And I should say we've got some exciting news too. We've just got our banking licence, which is very exciting in the last 36 hours. So we're now Islamic Bank Australia, which is fantastic news.
Mark Jones:
Yes. Congratulations on getting that. And I'd love to hear that story in a minute. Yeah, tell us about the definition here, because I think that's really, really key to our story.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes. I mean, it's just fundamentally different in terms of the way that it is set up to operate. So if you think about conventional banking, a lot of conventional banking is about, I kind of want to use your money for a little bit of time.
Dean Gillespie:
So if you're a depositor and the bank's like, "We want to do some loans, we need money to do that. So Mark, we are going to borrow your money for six months or something like that. And we are going to pay you interest for that sort of thing."
Dean Gillespie:
Whereas, what underlies Islamic banking is it's much more like a partnership. So it's more like saying, "Mark you might have $50,000 to invest. Let's work together. You give me your $50,000, we'll go away and we'll invest it in ethical activities that generate profit. And then we'll share that profit back to you."
Dean Gillespie:
So a conventional term deposit like let's say a CommBank or an ANZ, you'd get a guaranteed interest rate back. But what happens in Islamic banking is we still guarantee you're getting your principle back the $50,000, but depending on how much profit we make and the sharing arrangement that we have, you might make a little bit more than you're expecting, a little bit less than you're expecting.
Dean Gillespie:
And really that's what is important to Muslims because interest itself is prohibited under Islam. And so it's these sorts of arrangements, which we've never had these banking products in Australia before. We are now the first Islamic bank.
Dean Gillespie:
Whereas if you've go places like the UK, there's already six or seven different Islamic banks over there. And of course, if you go through the Middle East or Malaysia or Indonesia, places with very large Muslim populations that existed for years. So yeah, it's really exciting. We're bringing this to Australia for the first time.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. You would say it's probably about time in terms of the growth of the community here.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. I'm just interested because I also have a bit of experience in the Middle East, so I've seen it operating and well. How is that profit shared? What's the way that you calculate it in a way that's ethical and in accordance with Sharia law?
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah. So, part of the ethical part is literally the lens of we won't deal with certain types of industries. So it's not like you give us the money and then we use it to buy things that are prohibited in Islam, like alcohol or pornography, or those things. So, there's that lens to it.
Dean Gillespie:
But in terms of the sharing and the profits, I mean, that's really just part of the terms and conditions that we would issue with that customer. We haven't locked those things down yet, but we're not going to launch for a year or so.
Dean Gillespie:
So we've got to work through some of that, but historically, what you would normally do is in fact what most Islamic banks would do is they actually quote, you, say, "Mark, you've got funds to invest Mark." Quote you an expected profit rate. So, you kind of know the ballpark of what you get.
Dean Gillespie:
And then and obviously as I say, could be higher or a little bit lower than that, but generally we target it in that sense. And so it might be shared 50/50 or 60/40, or whatever, but we just got to work through that.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. But it's interesting those sort of percentages are way higher than 2% interest.
Dean Gillespie:
That's right. I mean, our aim is obviously to be really competitive with the other banks. One of the things you hear a lot when you talk to other Islamic banks around the world is that, "Oh, these products can be a little bit more complicated. They're a little bit more expensive. The customers end up being charged more."
Dean Gillespie:
But what my team has worked really hard on is how do we make this comparable so that... We don't want Muslim Aussies to be ripped off or paying more to bank with us than they would if they went to one of the other banks in Australia. And so, yeah, we're working through that at the moment, exactly what that looks like.
Mark Jones:
So you've mentioned that you're expecting to open in a year or so, and you've just been granted your licence by APRA, which is great news.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
What's it like to start from the very beginning and build a bank from the ground up?
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah, absolutely. It's funny actually, because I go to barbecues and things and people say, "What do you do?" And you say, "Well, actually we're starting a bank," and they just look at you funny for five seconds or so, and then go, "How do you even do that? Is that a thing?"
Dean Gillespie:
Look, I read mortgages at some of the biggest banks in Australia, so I kind of knew that part of the business, but I had never been exposed to how do you actually build a bank. So I had to teach myself over the last five years or so how to do it. And it's been a really rewarding activity.
Dean Gillespie:
I got into it because I had a lot of friends that were Muslim Aussies. And there was a group of people that were sort of thinking about putting this together. And so they approached me and said, "Look, could you come and help us out?"
Dean Gillespie:
And I started almost as a volunteer, basically doing some consulting, but largely as a volunteer in getting the thing up and running.
Dean Gillespie:
Obviously, there's the regulatory side. You've got to get your banking licence to be approved to do it. But a lot of the challenges, it's, you've got to build the products; you've got to design the brand; you've got to work out what your marketing looks like and who your segments.
Dean Gillespie:
But the IT, there's a lot of IT in a bank in terms of a core banking system, but also all the other bits, like risk management systems, fraud systems, so that we can check all your transactions and who's going to make those phone calls if we find one.
Dean Gillespie:
And so we've got an execution plan of, I think it's like 1500 rows of individual things that we have to do to build the bank in Microsoft Project. They're just little things we have to tick off.
Dean Gillespie:
People always ask me, "Is it hard?" And it's like, "Well, it's not complex." There's complex and complicated, right? Complex is something that is strategically difficult, like a hard problem to solve.
Dean Gillespie:
Complicated is something like, it's quite easy. There's just lots of little steps but there's heap... It's like putting together IKEA furniture, right. There's like thousands, and I've done a bit of that a few weeks ago, so I know what that's like.
Dean Gillespie:
But building a bank is complicated. There's nothing intrinsically difficult. It's just that there's a lot of individual pieces that you have to execute really well and plan. And so, that's the challenge for us. It takes time.
Dean Gillespie:
I'm lucky I've got a fantastic team. We're not massive. We're only about 15 people at the moment, but now that we've got the banking licence, we'll grow from there.
Mark Jones:
Who do you expect will be attracted to your bank?
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah. I mean, I think obviously as Australia's first Islamic bank, the natural population will be Muslim Aussies. And it's a really growing segment of the community.
Dean Gillespie:
The census results just came out for the census that we did in 2021. And if you go back to 2016, 5 years ago, Muslims in Australia, about 2.6% of the total population, it's now up to 3.2.
Dean Gillespie:
The actual number of Muslims in Australia is growing about 6% per year. So, it's a growing community. And the natural segment, of course, is people that will want to bank in line with their faith for the first time in Australia.
Dean Gillespie:
What we also find is if you look around the world, there's a lot of demand actually from non-Muslims as well in terms of these products, because they're structured differently and you've got this beautiful social responsibility, ethical layer that sits with them as well.
Dean Gillespie:
And we've got about 6,000 people on our waiting list. We have done hardly any marketing up to now. We're about to sort of start doing some of that. But they've signed up.
Dean Gillespie:
We get questions all the time from non-Muslims on our waiting list that are like, "I'm an expat. I used to work in the Middle East for 10 years. I had these Islamic products over there. I really like them. When are you going to open?"
Dean Gillespie:
We are really keen to get them in Australia as well. So banking's really interesting at the moment because you've had neobanks pop up from time to time and it's been five or six of them, I think in Australia up to now.
Dean Gillespie:
But their proposition tends to be either price. "We're going to have the highest deposit rates in the market and the lowest mortgage rates," and you're probably not going to make much money on that model. Or it's kind of, "Look at my shiny app, look at my digital experience," right.
Dean Gillespie:
And my position on that is they're both great, but they're not really sustainable competitive advantages. I mean, on one, you're not making much money. And on the second the big banks are throwing billions of dollars at digital every year, right. So, it's going to be hard to out compete them.
Dean Gillespie:
Whereas, I think where the world is kind of turning to and consumer expectations are moving to is businesses that do the right thing and businesses that act ethically.
Dean Gillespie:
So our proposition in the market obviously it's you've got the Islamic banking side, but it's also, we want to be a great digital bank, because we've got no technology already in terms of legacy. So we can build that from scratch and deliver that anyway.
Dean Gillespie:
But our proof point is much more around, "We are going to do the right thing and offer a real ethical opportunity for people that want to come along and bank with a bank that they can trust."
Mark Jones:
Yeah. Well, yeah, obviously from an Impact Institute perspective, very much, I was aware of that social justice perspective, the ESG drive, the desire for ethical products in market.
Mark Jones:
There's actually, as you're inferring, a very strong demand in the community for brands they can trust and would know that would have the integrity to support a sustained focus on that rather than window dressing on old products, right?
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
It'd be interesting to see what the split will be versus people who practise the Muslim faith versus those who don't, how that sort of emerges in your community.
Dean Gillespie:
One of the guys on our board is Sultan Choudhury. He got an OBE from the Queen. He started Al Rayan in the UK, which is pretty much the largest Islamic bank in the UK at the moment. And I think it's something like a third of their customers are actually not of the Islamic faith. So two thirds Muslim and it's the one third, not... And so that's something that's built up over time, of course. And once people get to know us a bit better...
Dean Gillespie:
I mean, we debated the brand a lot. From a marketing perspective, do you want to use the Islamic word in there or is that going to put off some other Australians that may not bank with you off the back of it, but we took a view that we should be proud of who we are and we're here for Muslim Aussies, not in the first instance, but we expect that's where the target segment will be over the next year or two first. And then, of course, if other people see what we're doing, then we are really hopeful that they'll join us as well.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. And I have to ask, what about your background? You obviously come credentialed in terms of the banking expertise. Is there an expectation from the Muslim community that you would share their faith if... In fact, you do or don't?
Dean Gillespie:
It's a good question. No, I mean, I'm not Muslim myself, but I've never felt that pressure from anyone. I think we live in a very modern, diverse, multicultural society and people have different beliefs.
Dean Gillespie:
It's actually one of the things that's really interesting about Muslim Aussies is they're actually very young. If you look at the demographics, 88% of Muslims in Australia under the age of 50, so it's actually quite a young community.
Dean Gillespie:
And actually there was a Griffith University study on their attitudes to the world and actually incredibly liberal and progressive on a lot of different topics.
Dean Gillespie:
Some people obviously in the Muslim community might say, "Why have we got a non Muslim running an Islamic bank?" But I've got so many people around me that are off the faith and people on our board that are off the faith as well. And all our hearts are absolutely in the right place. We want to deliver this for the Muslim community.
Dean Gillespie:
And, overwhelmingly you get so much support probably, because you're not of the Muslim faith and people sort of see that you're doing all this work for this segment. And I think that gives you extra street cred, to be honest.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. No, I think that's great. I'm just interested to know, and what I understand from Islamic banks is that in order to ensure their products, Sharia compliant, you need to work with scholars, Islamic scholars.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
And so, I imagine there's a governance process that you need to establish and then maintain over time, and that must be an interesting thing where I guess you've got a board, but you've also got this-
Dean Gillespie:
Sharia committee.
Mark Jones:
Yeah, correct, the Sharia committee. So, how does that work?
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah, that's a good question. So actually, if you go into different markets that have high amounts of Muslims, like Indonesia or Malaysia, it's actually regulated. There's actually the central banks or their Prudential regulators will have Sharia rules around the fact that making sure that the product's offered by those banks are Sharia compliant.
Dean Gillespie:
But clearly we don't have Sharia law in Australia. We have Aussie law and APRA, the banking regulator, who'd been incredibly supportive through this process. They don't chase us down on matters of Sharia. They chase us down, of course, around, "Are we running a bank well?" And all of those sorts of things, which we hope to do soon.
Dean Gillespie:
But we have to have a Sharia committee internally. That's the governance structure that we've decided to do. And that's pretty consistent with Islamic banks all over the world.
Dean Gillespie:
It's a bit like an audit committee. You put independent Sharia scholars on it so that as a management team we would make recommendations. They're not recommendations because it's our decision as the people running the bank at the end, but we go to the Sharia committee and get them to endorse those products.
Dean Gillespie:
And so, we have very preeminent world class scholars that are on that. A guy called Dr. Elgari who's... There's a world accounting standard for Islamic... He's on the Sharia committee for that, based overseas in the Middle East. We've got a guy who's on the Sharia committee from the Malaysian central bank.
Dean Gillespie:
So we've had to find people in these committees that can answer those questions and they issue what's got a Fatwah, and a Fatwah, it's a piece of paper that they sign saying these are Sharia compliant and that's incredibly important.
Mark Jones:
A declaration.
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah. It's literally a declaration. It's like, "We've signed off on this product as being in line with Sharia." You talk about marketing, that's an incredibly important thing.
Dean Gillespie:
One of the challenges in Australia up to now with some of the non-bank sort of lenders at the moment that have been doing Sharia is that they're getting their funding from conventional banks.
Dean Gillespie:
And so you get a lot of questions from the public saying, "Well, this is just like you've just changed some words in there. Is this really Sharia compliant on that sense?"
Dean Gillespie:
So one of the advantages of us being a bank is we can take deposits and do it in a Sharia compliant way and make the whole ecosystem Sharia compliant. But those fatwahs are incredibly important.
Dean Gillespie:
We get questions all the time from community members saying, "How can we have faith?"
Mark Jones:
Yeah.
Dean Gillespie:
That you do that. And look, the one thing I'd say is it's our core proposition, right, to be the Islamic bank. So of course, we're going to be Sharia compliant. That doesn’t work very well we don't.
Mark Jones (16:00):
Yeah. And obviously that's your integrity, that's the demonstration of integrity. And I guess one of the reasons I asked too, is that you've got from an innovation perspective, when you think about developing products, do you involve them at the beginning as well? Or is it just more like the stamp at the end?
Dean Gillespie:
No. I mean, we would involve them on the way through if we... We don't want to over invests our time in things that are not going to be Sharia compliant. I mean, the other thing is clearly my product head knows Sharia backwards, right. So even when we're designing things internally, we're taking that lens.
Dean Gillespie:
I take that lens. I obviously studied up a lot on this as well, right?
Dean Gillespie:
So, when we go to the committee... So we don't anticipate any pushback when we go there, but of course, we always respect their opinions and if we had an issue, we'd go away and we'd fix it.
Mark Jones:
Well that just makes a lot of sense to me. And I think one of the great things about this through the brand marketing lens is that you have a very clear point of differentiation, visibly and demonstrably different as opposed to the words that you reference. And so, I think being able to continually feed that through will be really key.
Mark Jones:
Well, let's talk then about creating the brand and the positioning, I guess, as a CEO, how do you think about the brand? How are you bringing people around you to effectively create this idea that lives in the hearts and minds of your community?
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah. It's been really interesting actually. So the business sort of came from a Genesis of 13 passionate Muslim Aussies that wanted to get this thing started. And so some of the brand elements like the name was something that they had always said we're going to use, Islamic Bank Australia. And even the logo that we use, which is sort of a cube, which is based on the holiest site in Mecca.
Dean Gillespie:
So, that was all kind of already there. But what we had to do is we had to sort of take it from what was an older kind of style and uplift it really and look at how do we transition that. And we had to be really conscious of the segment and even the demographics, right.
Dean Gillespie:
Like I said before, you've got such a young population. They're actually incredibly digital. We could have gone down the path of looking like a lot of these international banks, if you see them in Australia, they're kind of boring and bit drab and all of that sort of stuff.
Dean Gillespie:
And so we were sort of saying, "Well, what do we want to look like?" And we did a tone of voice piece of work with my whole team. And we said, "Well, we actually want to be young and we want to be vibrant."
Dean Gillespie:
And even the brand, we want it to be... I don't know, know how to say it, like kind of Channel 10-ish, if that makes sense, with bright colours and moving circles and all of that sort of stuff. And that's why the original cube logo then became a circle with a cube on it as well, because we think it just looks much more young and dynamic.
Dean Gillespie:
But I mean, the way that we started, of course, was to look at the segment and understand the people that we were most going to attract to us. And even around our brand taglines, do we focus on ethical versus Islamic, and those sorts of things. And we had a lot of those conversations internally and landed on Australia's Islamic bank, because it does what it says on the tin, to use that parlance.
Dean Gillespie:
And we're conscious that, as they say, there's about 3% of the population that's Muslim and they don't have a choice at the moment. So that's clearly our differentiator and where we landed on that.
Dean Gillespie:
But yeah. Because the other thing is we are a startup, right. So we've got cash in the bank, we have to do that. But we also didn't have the huge marketing budgets that you would get at...I came from CommBank, right. I didn't have that sort of budget unfortunately.
Mark Jones:
You're on a diet.
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah I’m on a diet. I should be on a diet basically.
Mark Jones:
But I didn't mean that.
Dean Gillespie:
No. So we had to do things, some of it internal obviously as well, but more on a consulting basis with the development of some of these things with a few small agencies that hopefully will grow with us over time.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. The key thing here is that sense of brand personality, that you want the brand to adopt and you have this unique, really once in a corporate lifetime to start out well.
Mark Jones:
There is a perception quite clearly, if you think about last couple of decades of the broader population's perspective and possibly what they think about Muslims and that sort of thing.
Dean Gillespie:
Yep.
Mark Jones:
There is the full spectrum of opinions and feelings, right?
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
But if I was to sort of pick one tone, I'd suggest it's this sense of more serious, older, committed historic, all that sort of stuff.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
The traditions, the not fun. Effectively, everything... The opposite of all the words that you used just now.
Mark Jones:
So, that's really quite interesting to me. How do you want to express that? And what are the sorts of things that as a CEO you'll be saying to those empowered to bring it to life. How do you conceive of that?
Dean Gillespie:
Yes. So I think it's important to break this apart a little bit, because clearly the products that we're going to offer and the services that we are going to offer are going to be subject to the traditional sort of Sharia requirements.
Dean Gillespie:
We won't deal with certain industries as I mentioned before, but we have to align that also with the nature of the community segments that we're going after in Australia. And as I said before, young, dynamic, progressive. That's what all of the studies tell us, the Muslim communities in here.
Dean Gillespie:
The other thing that flows into it is actually education because 38% of Muslims in Australia were born here. The rest came from overseas, but a lot of people have grown up here in a country where they haven't actually ever seen an Islamic product before.
Dean Gillespie:
So we have to sort of say, I won't get technical, but this is a diminishing Musharaka. This is how it works. This an Ijarah. This is a Murabaha, all those sorts of things.
Dean Gillespie:
So we took the view that you can still align yourselves from a product and service perspective in a traditional way, but you can deliver it and execute it in a very vibrant way.
Dean Gillespie:
And even if you look at the way that banking is heading, people don't go into branches much anymore. People want to work on their digital apps.
Dean Gillespie:
And Muslim Aussies are all over Australia. They're heavily concentrated in Sydney, in Melbourne, but Perth has a huge population. One of my staff is Muslim. He's in Geraldton in WA and I can't roll out branches in every town, across Australia. So we build it in such a way that you download the app and identify yourself with biometric facial identity and driver's licences, and then instantly open your bank account like that.
Dean Gillespie:
So as I say, yeah, from a marketing perspective, we took the view that we want to look dynamic and kind of young as a brand, but still reinforce the fact that we hold traditional values in terms of-
Mark Jones:
Yeah. Okay.
Dean Gillespie:
Actually, I hate those words, traditional. I'd say, we're delivering it in line with Sharia. It's not in a traditional kind of values way. We're very progressive in that sense.
Mark Jones:
Yes, yes.
Dean Gillespie:
The other thing we've wrapped around it is we've gone a little bit further than the traditional sort of Sharia, alcohol gambling, those sorts of things. And we've sort of said, "Well, we won't deal with big polluters. We won't deal with things that we believe are harmful to the environment or the community we don't want to go near.”
Mark Jones:
The neobanking backstory too is an interesting one here. We've just seen brands like Vault, which has disappeared. I read a story in Forbes that said the neobank era is over.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
We've got these quite dark looking clouds on the economic horizon. So what's your perspective on the best way to navigate through that? And obviously, the story here that we've discussed is great but the context in which you're telling the story is a bit troubled to say the least.
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah. I think that's right. And I think as I touched on before, the reason why I think neobanks, their propositions aren't always the thing that's going to go through to the end.
Dean Gillespie:
I mean, our proposition is fundamentally different. It's a growing market. We've got no competitors in it at the moment from a banking perspective. Where it could be challenging a little bit might be raising capital. I think we're in an environment, in a world now where you've got rising interest rates globally. People might be shifting their funds into safer sources.
Dean Gillespie:
We've got instability around the world, things like wars in Ukraine, et cetera which sort of always impact corporate mindset. And so, a lot of those neobanks have struggled to raise capital.
Dean Gillespie:
We are really positive because I think whenever I talk to investors, whether there Islamic banks overseas or even investors here in Australia, everyone gets the business straight away. It's a really easy business proposition to explain to people, right.
Dean Gillespie:
It's a growing segment; 3% of the population growing strongly every single year; no competitors; unmet need. Everyone's like, "We get it," straight away. So I'm always cautious about these things and I see the trouble that others have had, but I'm also, as my team tell me all the time, I'm overly optimistic sometimes and I'm always the person that's going, "No, we'll be right." So, we'll just keep pushing on through.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. So, is the Muslim community itself backing you?
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
Or where is that funding coming from?
Dean Gillespie:
I mean, we've got a fantastic investor from the UAE that gave us some capital, but the original capital came from, as I say, 13 founders, but we are doing a capital raise now to raise about 20 million Aussie dollars.
Dean Gillespie:
And yeah, that could come from the Muslim community. We get incredible support across the Muslim community. I mean, you talked about building the brand earlier. We've been known for years as the banking candidate across the whole Muslim...
Dean Gillespie:
Sorry, the banking licence candidate. The company that's going to be the bank across the whole Muslim community across Australia. And so, we've just got this kind of up-swelling of support that we’ve had.
Dean Gillespie:
Our website's gone lot nuts in the last couple of days, obviously, as people sign up, having heard the news that we've got the licence finally, which is absolutely fantastic to see. But it's just really helpful when you get these messages of support coming through constantly.
Dean Gillespie:
Even if things are taking longer than you think, Mark, we've had all sorts of things thrown at us, not the least of which was COVID. And APRA, the regulator, put licencing of all new banks on hold for a year during COVID. That was completely unanticipated, of course, for everyone. And we understand why they did that, but...
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah, we just get so many messages for support markets. It just makes it so much easier every day.
Mark Jones:
Tell me about your approach to leading an organisation in this context. And I'm interested with that sort of framework, what's the thing that has really surprised you?
Mark Jones:
What's been that sort of, "My goodness, me. It's harder or easier than I thought?" Or there's some aspect of the community that's really shaping the way that you lead this forward?
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah. I think that the hardest thing is always people. Trying to find good people that really know their stuff and also passionate people. I mean, I've always recruited people for passion, because I think if you get the right people and they're passionate and they understand the dream, then it just becomes so much easy to execute.
Dean Gillespie:
They get out of bed earlier and they... I'm not saying we drive people hard. We have really good work-life balance here and that, but it just makes such a difference I think, in building it.
Dean Gillespie:
But I think it's been challenging. Starting a bank is actually really hard. It's not an easy thing to do. And everyone I think knows different components of it.
Dean Gillespie:
I've got a brilliant chief risk officer. I've got a brilliant chief operating officer and they know their bits, but trying to pull it all together into a one way of doing everything is quite challenging. And it's taken a bit longer than what we thought on the way through.
Dean Gillespie:
But as I say, you just keep marching on forward. And that's what I say to the team is I've got no doubt that we will get to full launch in a year, or 18 months, or somewhere around there.
Dean Gillespie:
We've just got to keep chipping away every day. And every day we chip, we get a little bit closer to the goal. And sooner or later we will get there.
Mark Jones:
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, that's basically the saying if it feels hard, that's because it is hard.
Dean Gillespie:
Indeed. Yeah.
Mark Jones:
And so for people who are trying to tell a story and reflect the launch of a brand like this, the interesting thing through a marketing lens is that you're very much at that early origin story and vision setting stage.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
So, there's a story about how things are going to be in the future.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
And then you need to support that with evidence.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
Also, with a bit of sprinkling of magic fairy dust, whatever the appropriate metaphor is yes, to kind of keep things moving along. And so, that's fascinating to me.
Mark Jones:
What do you think intuitively might be the best marketing channel to grow it around the launch time?
Dean Gillespie:
Yes. Look, there's no doubt that we use search engine marketing to clearly... Obviously, we get a lot of people Google searching, Islamic banking in Australia and those sorts of things.
Dean Gillespie:
I mentioned before there's a... is actually a geographic concentration of where people live that are off the Islamic faith in Australia.
Dean Gillespie:
We can clearly do some local area marketing in those areas and community activities. But that's one of the main points because this is a proposition which is so devoted around religion, we are very conscious of not being the religious police.
Dean Gillespie:
We took that very firm view on that early on, that we're not going to quote the Quran at anyone or anything, but our community engagement strategy is just absolutely critical.
Dean Gillespie:
So, we've got a plan obviously to go and do events in pretty much every state around Australia. We're going to go and meet the Imams in the mosques and do as many sort of face-to-face community things that we can.
Dean Gillespie:
We are keeping our powder dry a little bit, because one of the things that we... I mentioned before Mark is we've got so many people on our list saying, "When are you going to open? When are you going to open?"
Dean Gillespie:
From a marketing perspective, it doesn't make sense for me to go and spend a whole heap of money now and then say, "Well, that's great." But in a year's time, we'll have a chat to you. It just doesn't make sense to do that.
Dean Gillespie:
But certainly bringing people on the journey with us is important. And we issue monthly updates out on our mailing list and we're trying to build a brand as well that's very personable and very friendly.
Dean Gillespie:
Like you don't ring up our call centre and get an interactive menu for five presses before you talk to anyone. We want to be really dynamic and, "Welcome to Islamic Bank Australia," almost straight away when people ring us up. And I think people really appreciate that in the conversations we've had with them already.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. That'll be the experience side of things.
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
And as you say, working with the community will be a key part of your strategy. I think, it's a good reminder that brands foster a community.
Dean Gillespie:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
Some communities are far more tightly knit like this one. And so when you have that opportunity, I guess to your point, you've really got to make sure you stay aligned or on the same page, right? What are the challenges you expect post-launch then in that sense? How do you keep everybody on the same page?
Dean Gillespie:
Yeah. Look, I think that's going to be the challenge. I mean it's, how do we execute this well and ensure that what we're doing is in line with the values, because I think to the point that you just made, Mark, it'll be a disaster for us if we found that one particular Imam or in a mosque starts telling everyone that we're not Sharia compliant or something like that because that's the sort of thing that could go like wildfire around Australia.
Dean Gillespie:
And even if it's wrong, it's a perception thing, right. So, I think we've just got to be really careful around the products that we are launching and making sure that our people are really doing the right thing by customers.
Dean Gillespie:
It's just a fundamental part of banking. Even beyond Islamic banking, you have to do the right thing. And the great thing, as I said before was, my staff are so passionate. We've recruited really well. I'm delighted with the team. And so, everyone's in it because we're trying to do the right thing by the Muslim community. And so, some people get up and go to work every day. And they just do their job and then they leave.
Dean Gillespie:
Our team is like, "No, we're here for a reason. We've got a really strong purpose. We want to do the right thing." And I think that really kind of shines through. Even just the tone of people when you talk to the community and customers when you're doing that.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. It's a great reflection that everybody owns the reputation of the organisation and to be consistent with that. So look, that's fantastic. I've really enjoyed the conversation Dean. It's exciting to have a conversation at this moment in time and to hear how you are processing all of these interconnected threads between brand and product development and innovation and community. So I do wish you and the team all the very best as you said about bringing this new business to life.
Dean Gillespie:
Thanks Mark. And it's a pleasure to come on the CMO Show and it's just... We're at that point, it's a really exciting moment for Muslims in Australia and yeah, we'll keep you updated as to how we go and get closer to launch. So, thank you.
Mark Jones:
Cheers.
So there you have it: Dean Gillespie on navigating establishing a bank from the ground up.
There’s a lot of great thoughts around how do you bring in people around you to effectively create an idea that lives in the hearts and minds of your community?
And as I mentioned, IBA have a very clear point of differentiation, both visibly and demonstrably different. I really think one of the big takeaways is how are you able to continually feed that through your messaging.
Are you breaking new ground in your marketplace? Let me know – I’d love to hear your story. And don’t forget to subscribe to The CMO Show on your favourite podcast app, so you never miss an episode.
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That’s all from me this time, thank you for joining us on The CMO Show. As always, it’s been great to have you with us. Until next time.