Joseph Divanna

About Joseph Divanna

Joseph A. DiVanna is the Managing Director of Maris Strategies, a Cambridge-based strategy think-tank providing research and advisory services to financial institutions, governments, and multinational companies. Described by The Economist as a "polymath" and by clients as "brilliant and fresh," he has built a career at the intersection of banking strategy, economic history, and the cultural dimensions of money and finance. He is the author of The Future of Retail Banking and Redefining Financial Services (both published by Palgrave Macmillan), Understanding Islamic Banking: The Value Proposition that Transcends Cultures, A New Financial Dawn: The Rise of Islamic Finance (co-authored with Antoine Sreih, then CEO of Europe Arab Bank), and editor of How to Run a Bank. He is the author of the annual Top 500 Islamic Financial Institutions listing published in The Banker magazine, the most widely referenced ranking of its kind globally. Before founding Maris Strategies, DiVanna was a faculty member at CSC Index's Research and Advisory Services, a management consulting firm known for pioneering business process reengineering. His work spans conventional and Islamic banking, financial inclusion, technology strategy, and what he calls "social financial cohesion," the role financial institutions play as the economic glue that holds a society together. He contributes regularly to The Banker, Financial World Magazine, Islamic Business and Finance, New Horizon, and The Middle East Banker. His research projects have included the GCC Currency Union, Islamic Monetary Union, Social Financial Cohesion in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the competitiveness of bank fees and income. He travels widely in emerging markets to study the cultural implications of money and finance, and his public lectures are known for drawing on medieval and early-modern financial history to illuminate present-day strategic questions.

Key message

The hardest part of modernising a bank has never been the technology. It is making the change legible to the people who have to live inside it. Financial institutions provide a nation with social financial cohesion, the economic glue that holds a society together. When that cohesion breaks down, the cost is not just commercial. It is social. Seven centuries of advances in technology have changed the tools of banking far more than they have changed what a customer actually wants: to understand what is happening to their money, and to trust the institution holding it. The banks that win their markets are the ones that close the gap between what they have built and what their customers believe they have built. Islamic and conventional finance are not competing systems. They are different expressions of the same human need for trust, fairness, and economic participation. Understanding both is a strategic advantage, not a compliance exercise.

Speaking topics and expertise

• The Future of Retail Banking: how institutions reinvent themselves without losing the customer in the process
• Understanding Islamic Banking: the value proposition that transcends cultures
• and why it matters for conventional banks too
• Social Financial Cohesion: why banking is the economic glue of a nation
• and what happens when the glue weakens
• When Technology Outruns the Story: why a homegrown core or a digital transformation is a communication project before it is a technology project
• Redefining Financial Services: how value propositions are changing in a world where customers have more choices and less patience
• The Dual-Banking Advantage: how institutions running conventional and non-interest operations under one group turn complexity into competitive strength