Masraf Al Rayan Brand Guidelines: A 2006 Doha Bank, Al Khaliji & the AlRayan Bank Name

A shareholding company licensed by Qatar Central Bank.

Masraf Al Rayan is a young bank by Gulf standards. Its investor-relations overview says it was incorporated as a Qatari shareholding company on 4 January 2006, licensed by Qatar Central Bank, and started operations in October 2006, with its head office in Doha. Its Articles of Association, the same page says, confine it to banking, financing and investing in line with the principles of Islamic Sharia. Its About page sets out a vision of becoming a full-fledged Islamic bank in Qatar and the world, offering Sharia-compliant products through efficient channels to every sector of its market, and lists product innovation and a well-recognised model of brand differentiation among its aims.

The bank is organised in three divisions. Retail banking covers current and savings accounts, time deposits, financing and credit cards; wholesale banking covers corporate finance and advisory work, cash management, treasury, trade finance and services for small and medium-sized businesses; private banking covers investment planning, asset management and wealth management. The bank says it serves customers through 17 branches, including the head office, and 101 ATMs across Qatar. Its own channels carry the short name: AlRayan online banking, the AlRayan Go app and AlRayan phone.

Around the bank sits a small group. Its website links to AlRayan Investment, which it lists under asset management and financial advisory; to a UK subsidiary, AlRayan Bank UK; and to Al Khaliji France, with offices in Paris and the UAE. A Final Notice from the UK Financial Conduct Authority, dated January 2023, describes the British bank as headquartered in Birmingham, owned through a holding company by Masraf Al Rayan, and offering Sharia-compliant savings, finance and current accounts, including home purchase plans.

Al Khaliji, 2020 to 2021.

The defining event in the bank’s recent history is its merger with Al Khalij Commercial Bank, known as al khaliji. According to the joint press release of 7 January 2021, a potential merger was first announced on 30 June 2020, and the two banks signed a merger agreement on 7 January 2021. The deal was structured as a statutory merger: al khaliji would be dissolved, its assets and liabilities would pass to Masraf Al Rayan by operation of law, and the combined bank would keep operating in accordance with Islamic Sharia principles. Both banks ran independently until completion, which depended on regulatory approvals and shareholder resolutions.

The legal merger was completed on 30 November 2021, the bank announced that day, calling it the first merger of publicly listed banks in Qatar and describing the combined group as one of the largest Shari’ah-compliant banks in the region. From that date the two were one legal entity. Customers were told to bank as normal while products and services were integrated during 2022, the head office was given as Lusail City, and the group listed international operations in France, the United Kingdom and the UAE. A new board and leadership team, the bank said, would oversee the work of bringing the two banks onto one platform, with customers, counterparts and stakeholders told in phases how the merger affected them.

One regulatory matter concerns the UK subsidiary. On 11 January 2023 the Financial Conduct Authority issued a Final Notice imposing a financial penalty on Al Rayan Bank PLC. The FCA found that between 1 April 2015 and 30 November 2017 the bank had not maintained adequate anti-money-laundering systems and controls, including on enhanced due diligence and on the handling of cash deposits, in breach of the FCA’s Principle 3. The notice records that the bank agreed to settle the matter.

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.

Leading Forward, November 2024.

The name customers see changed in 2024. On 26 November 2024, Gulf Times reported, AlRayan Bank, “the new trade name of Masraf Al Rayan,” unveiled a new strategy, vision and identity at an event at Al Baraha in Msheireb, attended by the Governor of Qatar Central Bank. The launch ran under the slogan “Leading Forward,” and the bank’s corporate-communication team described a refreshed logo and a vibrant blue palette meant to stand for trust, growth and progress, and for a balance of tradition and modernity. A second line from the launch, “One team, one dream, one family,” was presented as the motto of the staff behind it. The group chief executive told the launch that the change was “not merely a redesign” of the bank’s identity but the start of a new era for it.

The new name now runs through the whole website. The investor-relations pages describe the company as AlRayan Bank (QPSC), and the Arabic site uses بنك الريان. The investor page sets out a strategy called LEAD, with pillars on customer focus, execution, disciplined growth and a one-bank culture, while the About page lists five values in a short “We’re” form: dedicated, prominent, empowered, progressive and Islamic. Products and services keep plain names, among them Flexi Saving, AlRayan Rewards and Himyan cards.

For a design guide, Masraf Al Rayan shows how a bank can keep a formal legal name while moving its public face to a shorter trade name, and how a merger, a rename and a single colour can be told as one story. Compare QIB, Qatar’s first Islamic financial institution, and Dukhan Bank, another Qatari Islamic bank. For this guide we use a vibrant blue, a deep navy and a pale sky tone with a rounded modern sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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