Dear friends and colleagues,

While dunia is still a young company having traversed a short journey of less than 3 years since its inception, experientially it seems like a much longer journey that has been through a full business cycle of creation, growth, realignment, challenges, stresses and successes. 2008 was our year of inception. We were new and rearing to make a difference in ways that no other institution had ever hoped to.

Our wholesome dedication and ardor to change the way customers were treated injected a surge of fresh appeal to people in ways that they had never dreamed of. We made our mark and earnestly treated everyone to an unparalleled experience of world-class service, comprehensive solutions, supported reliably by workflow and technology, delivered with excellence and one where the customer always comes first – a truly unique approach which we call the 'dunia difference'.

2009 was our year of creativity, innovation and constant realignment in a rapidly transforming world. We were willing to go the extra mile for our customers, and invest in building capabilities that would allow us to succeed in the future, and to offer them with the highest standards of ethics and integrity. In short, we were willing to go back to basics – which many in the world had forgotten – and to disrupt the status quo to make a real difference in a fragile and fast changing financial services industry. The dictates of the difficult and demanding economic environment made us rethink and realign ourselves to suit the fiscal trends in order to not simply withstand but to also apply ourselves to benefit our customers and clients. The new changing order meant that many institutions had cut back on their exposure, and were unable to serve or were extremely conservative and cautious thus adversely affecting their customers and employees. dunia, and its unique and talented team of professionals, then made a conscious decision to provide “more with less” to combat the stress of the times. We worked even harder and smarter. We innovated, renegotiated, cut costs and worked with greater focus and passion to continue providing the best of services and products to our customers.

2010: The year of consolidation

This year has been a defining year for dunia. In many ways, it has been remarkable for dunia in terms of the growth that we have achieved as a whole, not just for all of us at dunia but also for all the people in association with us. We had just weathered the uncertainties of the previous year and had surfaced intact with great élan. We decided as a team to relentlessly continue in the upkeep of all our promises without compromise, which meant that we had to take stock of our strengths and readjust to excel in our commitments to fulfilling the saving, protection, transaction and borrowing needs of our clientele.

We made a conscious decision to not take for granted our already established state-of-the-art operational platform and resolute infrastructure, and our governance, risk and analytic capabilities, but to continue to build on them to enhance them even further.

We grew in capacity, resource and manpower while continuously expanding our operations and now operate out of 19 financial centers in the three emirates of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah, and stand poised to take on even more ahead.

Strengthening our pillars and building on our assets

As always, the customer is the core of our focus around which we build all our capabilities, to serve and deliver quality products and services. Our focus on putting in place a consistent and sustainable design ensures that we have the right cogs in place for the continuous flow of daily operations. This helps us not only surpass our financial goals but also increase the shareholder value. A constant review and upgrade of the most critical and integral components of the business; our people, our process and our franchise continues to be a norm, as it was through every quarter of 2010.

How we fortified our core strengths in 2010

• We built a talented and well-trained team that stands strong at 700+ in count, through the use of stringent selection processes headed by our seasoned senior management and functional specialists who personally ensure that the manpower recruited always falls in line with the principles of the business.
• We ensured an eclectic mix in terms of gender, nationality and experiences as the standards for recruitment to strengthen our proven model of synergy in diversity.
• We worked passionately to attract UAE National talent to our team, and built special programs that made working and learning at dunia extremely beneficial, and worked towards contributing to the development and growth of UAE Nationals to develop the long term leadership potential of the company.
• Partnering with world class institutions enabled us to recruit the best of talent thereby augmenting the already experienced workforce with a wider outlook while honing their latent skills through experience.
• We further enhanced our state-of-the-art in-house training and development center that encouraged talent and helped the people build on their skills and capabilities along with ensuring coverage of 98% of employees through training, aimed at helping improve both performance and potential of our employees.
• We continued our focus on building a conducive environment that helps retain talent with regular appraisals and goal setting processes that constantly encourage people to strive harder and aim higher, helping them develop parallel to the growth of the company.
• We continued to enhance our capacity in line with our growth and the future potential in the marketplace, so as to continue to build on our existing functional capabilities across operations, technology and risk management to enable success.
• Our ongoing periodic subjecting of our processes, controls and risk management to voluntary and mandatory reviews brought on the necessary assurance around risk management, governance, process controls and business practices, and this comprehensive focus resulted in a 100% compliance with all regulatory requirements in product design, process control and delivery.
• We continued to build on our customer focus and were voted by a leading publication to be in the top 10 organizations in the UAE for our customer focused service approach. We were judged us amongst other leading players on the service attributes of responsiveness and timely resolution of customer complaints.
• With the second full year of operations, a range of new innovative products and offerings were introduced to ensure a higher and sustainable revenue base, one example of which is the commencement of our offer of payroll processing services as an approved agent of the Central Bank of UAE to support the important national objective of fi nancial inclusion.
• We positioned ourselves even stronger as a depository institution offering corporate customers with attractive solutions for their surpluses, while providing value added services through dedicated relationship management, collateralized letters of guarantee, loans and products at preferred terms for their employees, backed by 24-hour access and world class service. Our service focused and value based pricing approach makes us a preferred choice amongst companies for their deposit needs.
• We worked towards creating strong strategic alliances that released a plethora of innovative products which in turn increased the rate of customer acquisitions by enhancing customer value and relevance.
• We further intensified our community involvement for the greater good of society through ‘dunia Cares’, our social initiative. We understand that with consumer choice being increasingly shaped by a company’s reputation and its impact on society, such an approach ensures longer term sustainability, and a healthier acceptance and support from all stakeholders, employees, customers, governments, investors, the media, and the community in general.

In summary, we worked relentlessly to build an even stronger brand, through focus, energy, passion, creativity, innovation, integrity and execution excellence – one that would truly empower people, enable success, and enrich lives.

Our financial strategy and performance in 2010

In 2009 we had a challenging plan in place for 2010, and I am proud to acknowledge that our performance has been well on track and, in some ways, even ahead of what we had planned. We achieved a revenue growth of 132% as compared with 2009. We improved the quality of our revenue by adding new products, diversifying our earnings, and creating new fee opportunities and a granular portfolio mix to avoid any concentration risks.

Our success at growing revenues strongly, while employing a spend-smart approach to expenses, helped us deliver a strongly positive operating leverage of 131% (excluding one-timers) in 2010 as compared to the previous year.

Having launched our business at the inception of the global crisis, our early and timely focus on right customer selection and a strong risk management approach, paid strong dividends, as we were able to successfully bring the cost of credit consistently down to a low level of 15% as compared to the previous financial year 2009, which saw a higher credit loss cost of 26%, in the midst of the global and local crises in the macro-environment.

A combination of this strategy, and its execution, helped us achieve strongly improved profitability where we closed the year better by AED 28 million, versus the prior 2009 financial year.

Our quarter on quarter improvements are even stronger, as our revenues continued to grow with the last quarter of 2010, being ahead on Net Income of the corresponding quarter in 2009 by AED 18 million, ensuring that we have built a strong and more reliable trajectory towards our goal of achieving break-even on Net Income and full profitability in 2011 – the year ahead.

Our future into 2011

We are poised to achieve great things in the year ahead. Our performance has consistently and substantially improved year on year and we are well on the way to our goal to strive towards becoming one of the substantive players in the market. While we aim to work towards ensuring that we deliver in the year 2011, our first year of profitability, we continue in all humility to remain focused on always delivering on our core objectives of serving our customers, adding value to our employees, changing lives, building futures, ensuring smiles and developing human potential in even more ways, just as we have attempted to do consistently since our inception in 2008.

A spirit of dedicated performance, consistent efficiency and diligent hard work has become the norm at dunia and to this effect, I’d like to express my gratitude to the dunia team and the employees for their commitment, hard work and ongoing support at various levels. I am also extremely thankful to all the board members, shareholders, our bankers and the regulators for the guidance, strength and rigorous support and encouragement at all times, as it has constantly spurred us on forward in our journey towards making a difference.

On a personal level, I am extremely excited about moving into 2011. Our growing capabilities and continued performance trends help renew and fortify our confidence in our institutional and collective faculties to take on the challenges and opportunities that the new economy and markets bring forth.

With my warmest personal regards,