A deep sense of concern for Egypt's challenges and a firm belief in the capacity of Egyptian youth inspired AAIB to collaborate with some of Egypt's leading academic institutions. In 2003, AAIB launched an annual nationwide banking competition for university undergraduates.

The first of its kind in the field of academia, the AAIB Award encourages university undergraduates to design innovative banking products or services for the Egyptian Banking sector or enhance existing ones.

The three winning projects receive financial prizes and all gain non-financial benefits through participation, which is where the true value of the award lies. Students apply in teams of three to five members and conduct in-depth research on the market to develop their idea into a full-realistic one.

This year, the program included material awards and more importantly non-material benefits in the form of intensive training to students given by bank executives and external experts on retail, corporate and investment as well as marketing, financial analysis, presentation skills and report writing. Representatives from the eight participating universities attended the closing ceremony at the Four Seasons Hotel. Dr. Hany Helal, Minister of Higher Education and State for Scientific Research was among the panelist.

After running successfully for 5 years, AAIBs 6th Annual Award showed great progress this year with 180 students taking part in the contest. Modern Sciences and Arts University (MSA), for the first time in AAIB award history, won first place and received EGP 50,000. British University in Egypt (BUE) was ranked 2nd place, receiving EGP 25,000 and The American University in Cairo (AUC) in 3rd place winning EGP 15,000.

The success of the AAIB Award in its previous five years across Egypt has led the bank to expand the scope of the contest and increase the number of participating universities to reach eight this year: AUC, MSA, Cairo University, The German University in Cairo (GUC), Arab Academy for Science and Technology and Maritime Transport (AAST), Misr International University (MIU), and for the first time this year Alexandria University and the BUE.

Competition is a fact of life wherever there is ambition and motivation to become the best. It can be a positive motivator to work harder to reach ones goals. The AAIB Award helps in creating that kind of positive attitude and atmosphere by learning to work as part of a team, managing success and disappointment, gaining knowledge about responsibility and time management by balancing training and other activities. Moreover, students get an early feel of finance and training in banking, which is an introductory overview of how business works in practice. Also, the students learn to think outside the box; since you have to be innovative because this is what differentiates you from others and might make one party win the AAIB Award over the other.

We would like to thank all of the participating universities



For more information, please visit www.aaibaward.com