It may take a conventional bank a decade – or more in the UAE’s cut-throat market – to become a lender with Dh100 billion ($27.2 billion) in assets on its balance sheet.

Wio Bank is halfway to that mark, less than three years after its launch, and the digital lender aims to double its asset base in as many years.

“We are on track to get there, and I don't think we are too far away. The objective would be to get there in two to three years max,” Jayesh Patel told The National. “Actually, the balance sheet must be close to Dh60 billion, so the other Dh40 [billion] … you do the math. And if we grow just like we grew, it would be at least two years to get there.”

Seven UAE banks are currently in the Dh100 billion asset league. Although the UAE banking regulator has no set criteria to define a large banking institution, hitting the Dh100 billion mark is regarded as an industry standard that separates bigger lenders from their smaller counterparts.

Wio is among the fastest growing banks in the country and is backed by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign fund ADQ, telecoms and technology company e&, UAE’s biggest lender by assets First Abu Dhabi Bank and investment company Alpha Dhabi.

But Mr Patel has set the sights higher. “If the bank maintains the kind of growth it has achieved in the past two years, it is not going to be long before, especially on the retail and SME [small and medium-sized enterprises] side, we are in the [UAE's] top five players, and that is our ambition,” he said. “We want to eventually get to top three.”

Current top-tier lenders FAB, Emirates NBD and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank are huge in terms of their size and asset bases, Mr Patel said.

However, in terms of second-tier lenders, “we are closing in very, very quickly … and the objective is to keep on moving up”, he added. “Customers have supported us, they have their confidence with us, and we are working every day to grow progressively into that space.”

Stellar growth

Wio, whose asset base grew to Dh11 billion at the end of its first full year of operations in 2023, reported a threefold rise to Dh37 billion at the end of the last year. In October, the bank announced it had passed the Dh50 billion asset mark.

The bank’s profit of Dh2 million at the end of 2023 ballooned to Dh400 million at the end of 2024, as its revenue base expanded to Dh800 million, from Dh266.4 million a year earlier. The lender last year added 140,000 retail customers and its business clients increased to 90,000.

Mr Patel is confident that Wio will be able to maintain the “stellar” growth for the next few years. “I think 2025, absolutely, we should see strong numbers,” he said. “I think we still have a few years of exponential growth.”

The industry is changing along with technology, and new opportunit