The Banking Sector During COVID-19

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors explore the banking sector during coronavirus era by using Bahrain Islamic Bank as a case. Overall, the pandemic has speeded several decisions and actions in the digital transformation journey of the banking sector. Prior literature has identified four main strategies, namely retrenchment, preserving, innovating, and exit in response to a crisis. The findings show that the decisions taken by Bahrain Islamic Bank support the preserving and innovating strategies, which are mostly related to the continuation of its operations and preservation of its market share and customers as well as digitalization of their services and reliance on technological solutions to cope with the precautionary measures imposed by the pandemic.