The bank has signed an enterprise license agreement, allowing future expansion of the solution across all operations, including retail and investment.

Mashreq markets a diverse range of products and services including credit cards, consumer lending, trade finance, project finance, electronic funds transfer at point-of-sales, automated teller machines, call centres, treasury, correspondent banking, online and GSM banking and retail banking. With more than 500,000 customers, it accounts for one in every two households in the United Arab Emirates, with a wide range of product offerings in every business segment.

"In-depth market and customer research undertaken over the past three years revealed that there was room for improving Mashreq customers' perceptions of bank statements. As part of our new direction, we have selected Skywire Software's Customer Communications Management (CCM) solution to design new documents in order to strengthen responsiveness to bank statements," said Nabeel Malik, head of Retail Banking Group, Mashreq.

"We are expecting to eventually process up to one million pages a month for the bank's standard and gold account customers. A total of five different documents will be printed: Consolidated Relationship Statement for current and savings accounts, advices, loans and credit cards. This move comes as we constantly seek out new processes aimed at making things better for customers."

The re-branding roll-out will use Skywire Software's solutions for batch processing and archival to automate processes and ensure that the new format is available at all the bank's branches, becoming the standard for all customers.

Michael Turton, the consultant who advised Mashreq on the new format and style of the bank statement, said: "These documents are often the only communication a bank has with its customers. The impact of colour, the placement and style of the logo, where certain information is positioned, and many other seemingly minor details, are critical to how responsive customers are, whether that response is positive or negative."

To retain a professional and a positive relationship with its customers, it was critical that the roll-out of the newly branded statements was handled effectively and in a carefully orchestrated manner that maintains the effectiveness of the re-branding programme and eliminates any potential confusion.

Tracey Robinson, vice president and managing director of Skywire Software EMEA, said: "Rolling out re-branded materials effectively is as important as getting the design of customer communications right. We are delighted to be working with Mindscape and Mashreq to ensure that this exciting programme is a complete success for the bank and its customers."

The Skywire Software solution has also been integrated into the Bank's back-office systems, which comprise of Banksys, its main banking system, Select, for credit card processing, and Flexcube, a program specifically for financial investments running in a Windows Vista environment on HP servers.