Saudi National Bank Brand Guidelines: NCB, Samba & the April 2021 Merger

A royal order in Jeddah, 1953.

Saudi National Bank traces its roots to Jeddah and to the National Commercial Bank, known as NCB. Arabic Wikipedia says the bank began work under a royal order dated 26 December 1953, which combined two of the kingdom’s money-exchange businesses, the firm of Saleh and Abdulaziz Kaki and the firm of Salem bin Mahfouz, into a single partnership; it describes the result as the first bank of Saudi origin to be legally registered. English Wikipedia also gives December 1953 as the founding date.

For more than four decades NCB stayed a private partnership. English Wikipedia says it was constituted as a general partnership until 1 July 1997, when it became a joint stock company, and that in 1999 the Saudi government took a majority holding through the Public Investment Fund. Arabic Wikipedia adds that the remaining shares were divided between the General Organization for Social Insurance and a group of Saudi investors.

The bank went public in 2014. According to English Wikipedia, shareholders approved the offer in March 2014, subscription ran from 19 October to 2 November 2014, and the shares have traded on the Saudi exchange, Tadawul, since 12 November 2014. Arabic Wikipedia credits NCB with launching the first investment fund in Saudi Arabia in 1979, and lists a series of other firsts the bank has claimed, in credit cards, cash machines, student savings plans and branches for women.

Samba, Citibank’s Saudi successor, joins in 2021.

The other half of today’s bank had American roots. English Wikipedia says Samba was set up on 12 February 1980, under a royal decree, to take over Citibank’s branches in Jeddah and Riyadh, opened in 1955 and 1966, after Saudi rules required foreign banks to be majority owned by Saudi nationals. It was first called the Saudi American Bank; Citibank kept a minority stake and managed the new bank under a technical management agreement. Samba merged with United Saudi Bank in July 1999, took the name Samba Financial Group in 2003 and saw Citibank sell the last of its holding in 2004. Abroad it bought control of a Pakistani bank in 2007, now Samba Bank Pakistan, and opened branches in Dubai in 2008 and Doha in 2010, Wikipedia says. In 2017 Samba became the first listed Saudi commercial bank to appoint a woman as chief executive, according to the same article.

The two banks agreed to combine in 2020. Arab News reported in January 2021 that NCB had signed a legally binding merger agreement with Samba on 11 October 2020, and that Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Competition approved the deal on 27 January 2021. In March 2021 the paper reported that the Saudi Central Bank had also approved it, that shareholders of both banks had voted in favour that month, and that the combined lender would be called Saudi National Bank, headquartered in Riyadh with some operations and logistics teams in Jeddah.

The merger took effect on 1 April 2021, English Wikipedia says. The new bank’s chairman told a webinar reported by Arab News in March 2021 that it would have 503 branches in the kingdom, about a quarter of all bank branches in the country, that 21 branches sitting close to one another would be relocated, and that its retail branches would be fully Islamic when the rebranded outlets opened on 1 April; in corporate banking, he said, more than 70 percent of loans would be Shariah-compliant. Islamic, or Shariah-compliant, banking structures accounts and financing to follow Islamic commercial rules, which among other things avoid conventional interest.

The change of name was not uniform. Inside Saudi Arabia, English Wikipedia says, the NCB and Samba names and branding were replaced by the new SNB identity, while Samba’s name and branding stayed in use outside the kingdom, as with Samba Bank Pakistan.

The Gulf banking register.

Gulf banks present themselves in two scripts at once. Emirates NBD and QNB both pair a short English name with a full Arabic one — QNB’s Arabic name, بنك قطر الوطني, reads simply as Qatar National Bank — so an identity has to work in right-to-left Arabic and left-to-right Latin, often on the same card, sign or app screen. The guides in this series look at marks built from geometric forms or from Arabic calligraphy, at palettes of deep blue, green and gold, and at photography that moves between city skylines and heritage scenes.

They also look at how banks organise what they sell. Retail, private and corporate banking usually sit in separate sections of a bank’s website, and the larger groups add brands of their own: Emirates NBD runs Emirates Islamic as its Islamic bank and Liv as its digital bank, and QNB has launched a digital bank called ezbank in Egypt.

Islamic finance shapes much of that design work. Islamic banking avoids interest, so financing is usually arranged as a sale at an agreed mark-up, a lease or a partnership, and products are reviewed by a board of Sharia scholars. Product pages for Islamic accounts and financing therefore have to explain those structures in plain language.

Banks in the region also tie their brands to national plans and to sustainability. QNB links its sustainability work to Qatar National Vision 2030, according to Wikipedia, and Emirates NBD built a 2026 campaign around Emirati Women’s Day. Brand work now reaches beyond the logo too: in December 2025 QNB launched a sonic identity that blends the oud with modern synthesisers, Gulf Times reported. Each guide sets out what can be checked about one bank — its founding, its mergers and its owners — and treats the palette shown as our own interpretation.

Two names, two scripts.

The bank works in two languages and, in effect, under two names. In English it is Saudi National Bank, shortened to SNB; its Arabic name, البنك الأهلي السعودي, keeps the word Ahli from NCB’s Arabic name, البنك الأهلي التجاري, and English Wikipedia notes that the bank is also known as SNB AlAhli. Its investment-banking arm is SNB Capital.

Ownership remains largely public. English Wikipedia says the bank is mainly owned by the Saudi state through the Public Investment Fund and the General Organization for Social Insurance, and that its subsidiaries and affiliates operate in eight countries. Arabic Wikipedia lists a majority stake, dating from the NCB years, in the Turkish Islamic lender Türkiye Finans. Forbes Middle East ranked SNB third on its Top 100 Listed Companies 2025 list and second on its 30 Most Valuable Banks 2025 list, according to English Wikipedia.

For a design guide, Saudi National Bank shows how a merger becomes one bilingual identity: two older names retired at home, a new English name and abbreviation, and an Arabic name that keeps a word from the older bank. Compare Saudi Exchange, where the bank’s shares have traded since 2014, and Al Rajhi Bank, another Riyadh lender. For this guide we use a deep green, sand and ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Saudi National Bank’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.