&Diversify products and services without having too many products
that would confuse customers, using the ‘‘Keep It Simple Stupid -
KISS’’ approach.
&Expand customer base through better involvement with family, in-
cluding children and grandchildren, to keep an evergreen book of
clients.
&Expand customer base through asking for referrals.
&Continue to carve and deepen a unique corporate image and culture
and promote social responsibility in lending and services.
&Continue to advocate, enhance, and implement a bank policy of cul-
tural diversity among employees and bank customers.
8.Continue to reduce bank operating expenses.
&Control expenses on all fronts by paying attention using a micro-
expense review approach.
&Motivate and reward team members by using productivity-based
and bank profitability-based salary and bonus review programs
through a system tied to personal production and bank profitability.
&Insist on thorough and prudent loan analysis to reduce loan losses.
&Develop steps to achieve close scrutiny and follow up of existing
loans in order to solve any problems and fix them, if possible, before
they occur.
&Conduct weekly comparisons between actual expenses and budgeted
expenses.
9.Increase bank income.
&Actively pursue the prudent growthof the loan portfolio through
deeper penetration of current depository customers and cultivation
of new customers through referrals and community involvement.
&Preserve and retain existing loans.The following includes strategic steps that were implemented to im-
prove the management process of bank operations.
1.Open and review all incoming and outgoing mail and faxes.
The first step taken by the new management was to find out where
the bank was, and what was going on in its day-to-day operations. It is
important that we share our management experience with the reader,
because this was one of the important steps that helps in understanding
what is going on in a newly acquired institution. The new chief execu-
tive officer asked that all incoming and outgoing mail and faxes be
brought to his office so that he could open the incoming mail, review
the incoming faxes, approve the outgoing faxes before they were sent,
and read the outgoing mail before the envelopes were sealed, stamped,300 THE ART OF ISLAMIC BANKING AND FINANCE