Alun Williams  
Associate Director
Gulf Ventures Corporation


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•Alun is an Associate Director at Gulf Ventures Corporation. He has over 23 years experience in the retail financial services industry, the majority at Barclays, where he had roles across the Group, including senior roles responsible for customer segmentation, customer strategy and proposition development. Alun was responsible for the proposition that became ‘Barclays Open Plan’, and also for the replacement of the ‘b2’ investment brand with a Barclays branded mass market investment offer, and was involved in the development of ‘Platinum Banking’ and the integration of The Woolwich.


•Arguably the most experienced marketer in European Islamic financial services, Alun was sales & marketing director of Islamic Bank of Britain, and subsequently the marketing, distribution & sales strategist behind the creation and launch of Principle Insurance, and it’s Islamic insurance brand, Salaam insurance. Alun was also engaged by the UK Government’s retail savings agency, National Savings & Investments (NS&I), as the “subject matter expert” for their submission to the Treasury’s review of Islamic Financial Services, published in 2008.

 •Not only was Islamic Bank of Britain the Western world’s first dedicated Islamic bank, it was also the creation of the UK’s first stand-alone retail bank in living memory.  Consequently, Alun has a very broad skill set across the entire sales & marketing discipline, ranging from concept creation, regulatory approval, infrastructure & channel implementation, new product development and branding to day to day business management, including product management, marketing campaigns, sales management and partnership development. This experience has been consolidated through his involvement in three further start ups, an Islamic insurance business in the UK, a prepay card and payments business in Saudi Arabia, and a specialist corporate governance advisory firm in the GCC.

 •Alun also embedded a customer centric culture at National Savings & Investments (NS&I) and has led customer strategy at Coventry Building Society.

 •Alun is a British national working out of Bahrain. He has a MBA from Loughborough University, the Post-Graduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has successfully completed an AAOIFI Sharia Training Programme.