Retail banking gains ground

To step into the workplace of the retail banking leader in Lebanon, one passes through the hallways and anterooms of a busy lender’s back office operation. With a view, albeit an unspectacular one, from the tenth floor, the corner space that BLOM Bank’s retail head Elias Aractingi commands at work is both functional, and a comfortable backdrop for a discussion of the bank’s retail performance. The office is not located in BLOM’s gleaming banking palace in Verdun however, but a vigorous 10-minute jog away in the Hamra district. Aractingi says he frequently makes the short commute and quips that his department’s location in a secondary building was necessitated by their retail banking success of recent years, which has far exceeded expectations held in the 1990s when the headquarters building was designed. “We are the leader in housing, car loans, personal loans and in credit cards if you look at outstanding