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

Achievements

Author of five books on banking, financial services, and Islamic finance published by Palgrave Macmillan and Leonardo and Francis Press, including The Future of Retail Banking, Redefining Financial Services, Understanding Islamic Banking, A New Financial Dawn, and How to Run a Bank. Author of the annual Top 500 Islamic Financial Institutions supplement for The Banker magazine (Financial Times Group), the global benchmark for ranking Shariah-compliant financial institutions. Regular contributor to The Banker, Financial World, Islamic Business and Finance, New Horizon, and The Middle East Banker. Former faculty member at CSC Index's Research and Advisory Services, a firm known for pioneering business reengineering. Research on Social Financial Cohesion in Sub-Saharan Africa and the GCC Currency Union.

Talks and speeches

The Future of Retail Banking: Drawing on his book of the same name (Palgrave Macmillan), DiVanna addresses the trends reshaping competition in financial services, including globalisation, market structure, technology, and demographics, and shows how they will reshape business opportunities, revenue, branding, and customer behaviour. He gives banking leaders a strategic framework for positioning their institution for the next decade, not just the next quarter. Understanding Islamic Banking: Based on his widely referenced work on the value proposition that transcends cultures, this talk examines how Islamic finance differs from conventional finance through the lens of customers, bankers, and strategists. It is designed for audiences that include both practitioners and leaders who need to understand how Shariah-compliant products sit alongside conventional offerings. Social Financial Cohesion: DiVanna's most distinctive original contribution. He argues that financial institutions are not merely commercial entities but the economic glue that holds societies together. Drawing on research in Sub-Saharan Africa, the GCC, and emerging markets globally, he shows what happens when that cohesion weakens and what banks can do to strengthen it deliberately. When Technology Outruns the Story: A talk built for banks that have invested heavily in technology, built new platforms, or completed major migrations, and now need the market and the workforce to understand what it means. DiVanna draws on case studies from banks across emerging and developed markets to show why communication should be designed alongside the build, not after the launch.

Delivery style

Intellectually rigorous, historically grounded, and genuinely accessible. DiVanna brings centuries of banking history into the room and uses it to sharpen current strategic questions without ever becoming academic. His style is conversational rather than performative: he treats the audience as peers, draws on research and case studies from both developed and emerging markets, and moves between conventional and Islamic finance with an ease very few speakers can match. Audiences describe him as "brilliant and fresh." His talks prompt questions that outlast the session

Why audiences listen

Because most conversations about banking transformation start with technology and end with implementation, and they skip the part that decides whether either of them works: whether the people inside the bank and the customers outside it understand what has actually changed. DiVanna is one of the few global voices who can speak across conventional and non-interest banking, across developed and emerging markets, and across ten centuries of financial history to show why the banks that succeed are the ones that make their strategy legible to everyone it touches.

What the talks address

How to frame a major technology investment as a story the market and the workforce can understand and repeat. Why institutions running both conventional and non-interest banking under one group face a specific communication challenge, and how the best of them solve it. What the history of banking teaches about which innovations survive and which ones fail, and why the difference is almost always in how the change was communicated, not how it was engineered. How to position a bank's strategic narrative so that employees, customers, and regulators all hear something that makes sense to them.

What participants will learn

Why the gap between what a bank builds and what its customers believe it has built is the single most underestimated strategic risk in financial services. How to apply lessons from both conventional and Islamic banking to strengthen their institution's value proposition. How to identify the points in their organisation where a sound strategy is most likely to lose coherence on the way to the customer. Why communication infrastructure should be treated as seriously as technology infrastructure, and what that looks like in practice.

What audiences take home

A historical and strategic framework for understanding where their bank sits in a longer arc of financial innovation. A sharper way to evaluate whether their institution's technology narrative is reaching the people it needs to reach. Practical insight into how other banking groups, including those operating across conventional and non-interest lines, have closed the gap between what they build and what their markets believe. A credible external perspective from someone who has studied hundreds of banks and can say plainly what separates the ones that succeed from the ones that stall.

Benefits for individuals

A deeper understanding of how banking strategy, technology, and communication interact, and where the gap between them tends to open. Access to frameworks from ten centuries of financial history, applied to the decisions they face today. The ability to articulate their institution's transformation story to colleagues, customers, and regulators with more clarity and conviction.

Benefits for organisations

An external perspective on how the bank's modernisation and growth narrative reads from the outside, and where it may be losing coherence. A credible reference point for how other institutions running dual conventional and non-interest operations have managed the communication complexity. A sharper understanding of why technology investments succeed or stall based on whether the people who have to live with the change understand it, and what that means for how the bank designs its next major programme.