Bank Albilad Brand Guidelines: A 2004 Riyadh Bank, Enjaz & a Dome-and-Sunrise Logo

Licensed in Ramadan 1425.

Bank Albilad is a Saudi joint stock company headquartered in Riyadh. The bank says it was established by royal decree on 21 Ramadan 1425 in the Islamic calendar, which it gives as 4 November 2004, and that it operates under the supervision of the Saudi Central Bank. English Wikipedia also gives 2004 as its founding year and describes it as an Islamic bank.

The bank’s own timeline puts its founding in 2004 and the start of its banking activities in 2005; the business-data service Zawya gives an incorporation date of 19 April 2005. The timeline then becomes a list of capital increases — in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2024 — and of dividend distributions, with subordinated sukuk, Islamic certificates, issued in 2016 and 2021.

Its stated position is plain. The English version of its website calls it “Genuine Islamic Banking” and “a story of trust, built on the Islamic principles of banking,” and its vision is “to be the preferred choice of innovative Islamic banking solutions.” Its values, it says, have been upheld “from Day-1”: initiative and innovation, care and partnership, and trust and accountability.

It runs a Sharia Committee and a Sharia Division to follow up on and monitor the committee’s decisions, English Wikipedia says; the bank publishes the committee’s decisions, publications and videos on its website. Zawya describes four segments — retail, corporate, treasury, and investment banking and brokerage — with retail including deposits, financing, remittances and currency exchange.

From remittance centres to a payments company.

Bank Albilad’s most visible sub-brand is Enjaz. In November 2009 Arab News reported that the bank planned to expand its Enjaz remittance division across the Kingdom, and that it had by then set up 94 centres for money transfers and cash currency exchange. English Wikipedia still describes Enjaz as the bank’s remittance arm.

Its status changed in 2022. In August that year Arab News reported that the bank had set up a wholly owned company in Riyadh, Enjaz Payment Services Co., licensed by the Saudi Central Bank as a major electronic money institution, to take over the payments and remittance work previously run as a division of the bank. Enjaz’s own website gives its licence date as 31 July 2022 and now presents the Enjaz Pay app, with international and local transfers, Enjaz cards, bill payments and household salary payments.

Other names sit around the bank. Albilad Capital is its investment banking arm; Mukafaat Albilad is its loyalty programme; and Horizon is its financial innovation centre, set up, the bank says, to work with the wider innovation community on new products and services. Zawya lists Albilad Investment Company, Albilad Real Estate Company and Enjaz Payment Services Company among its subsidiaries.

The bank also points to accessibility work. English Wikipedia and the bank describe a dictionary of banking terms in sign language, a branch equipped for customers with disabilities and cash machines adapted for blind customers; its social programmes include Albilad Mubadara and a solar power system at the Albilad Tower.

Design and documentation.

Islamic banks present themselves through a small set of recurring signals. Green, gold and deep blue appear often in their wordmarks and branch signs, and many write their names in two scripts side by side: Arabic, or Jawi in Malaysia, next to Latin letters. Geometric patterns, drawn from the long tradition of Islamic ornament, turn up on cards, reports and branch interiors, usually as a background rather than as a logo.

Their names tend to say what they are. Words such as “Islamic,” “Islam” and “Syariah” sit in the name itself, alongside the country or city, so that the banking model is part of the brand. Product names follow the same logic: accounts and financing are often labelled with the Arabic name of the contract behind them, such as murabaha, a cost-plus sale; ijara, a lease; mudharabah, a profit-sharing arrangement; or wakalah, an agency.

Their websites have a common structure. Alongside the usual pages on savings, cards and home and business financing, most carry a page on the bank’s Sharia supervisory board or council, the panel of scholars that reviews its products, and many add pages on sukuk, the Sharia-compliant certificates used in place of conventional bonds, on takaful, the cooperative form of insurance, and on zakat and charitable giving. Newer banking apps add prayer times and the qibla direction next to transfers and payments.

Annual and sustainability reports are where much of the identity is set out at length, with the Sharia board’s statement printed beside the auditors’ report. This guide follows what dated sources say about each bank — when it was founded, how it was merged, renamed or listed, and how it describes its own products — and treats the palette and type shown here as an unofficial interpretation rather than any bank’s own.

Globe, dome, coin, sunrise and crescent.

Bank Albilad publishes its own reading of its logo. An Arabic page on its website says the mark has three parts. The lower part combines a globe, for the reach of its branches across the Kingdom and the use of the latest technology; a dome, a form of Islamic architecture, for its commitment to Sharia; and a coin, for its core work of investing and growing customers’ assets. The upper part shows a sunrise, the start of a new day, and the landscape of the country — the desert and its golden sands — which the bank links to tradition and heritage. The middle part holds a crescent, the new moon that begins the month, and a road towards the future. The colours, the page says, were chosen to carry those meanings.

The bank also publishes a short bilingual branding guideline, marked as version 2 and dated 2020. It sets a clear space around the logo and a minimum size of 30 millimetres; it keeps a vertical lock-up for flags and outdoor banners, a horizontal one for external cash machines only, and the symbol alone for the app icon and promotional items. It names three official colours — an orange-gold, a red and a warm grey, each with a Pantone reference — and one type family, Frutiger LT Arabic, in bold and black for headlines and light for text, in both Arabic and English. It also asks for Western digits rather than Eastern Arabic numerals. Its list of misuses rules out recolouring the logo, changing its font, stretching it or using the wordmark without the symbol.

For a design guide, Bank Albilad shows a symbol built as a story, with each shape given a stated meaning, and a nine-page guideline that sets out how to use it. Compare Al Rajhi Bank, another Riyadh Islamic bank, and Alinma Bank, its Riyadh contemporary. For this guide we use a dune gold, a dome red and a warm stone grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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