Philanthropic finance

Did you know that 70 per cent of the UAE’s working population earns too little to access even a basic current account? Ian Dillon and Katherine Budd did, and now their bank for the unbanked is looking to revolutionise the GCC’s financial technology sector…

Minimum salary requirement. Three little words that, depending on your social background, will produce very different emotions. If you’re a western professional, chances are it’s an arbitrary term that’s had little bearing on your life in the UAE. However, if you are among the 70 per cent of working residents earning less than Dhs5,000 per month, the threshold to access banking services in 2017, those three little words likely represent an almost insurmountable barrier.

Think, for a moment, what life would be like without a bank account. No more online bill paying. No more ordering groceries online, not to mention the personal security concerns of having to withdraw your entire salary in one go using a single-use payroll card and having to keep it safe until you find the time to queue to pay your bills and transfer money to your family back home. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“I don’t think people are fully aware of how many migrant workers there actually are here,” says Ian Dillon. “You say 70 per cent of workers and that’s an abstract number, but that’s 4.5 million people in the UAE alone. Expand that to the GCC and you’re looking at 26 million. It’s quite unbelievable. And it’s never even occurred to many unaffected people that this whole group can’t get a bank account, or what that really means in terms of doing the most simple things. So there’s a total lack of understanding and knowledge.”

The fact that they’re addressing that lack of understanding and bringing the issue into the light is a happy by-product of a serious business intention for Ian, 31, and his business partner Katherine Budd, 30, who together have created NOW Money, an online only bank for the unbanked that’s being hailed as a major step forward towards equalising economic access for workers across the GCC.