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Saham Bank, the Moroccan lender controlled by billionaire Moulay Hafid Elalamy, has launched a private banking and family office business for wealthy individuals and business-owning families, two years after his Saham Group bought the bank from France's Société Générale.
The new unit, called Saham Bank, Private Banking & Family Office, went live on Oct. 22. It is run by Salima Benhima and offers investment strategy, wealth structuring, tax and succession planning, and help drawing up rules for running family companies. Each client is assigned a single private banker who brings in the bank's specialists as needed.
"Our ambition is to offer our wealth clients a distinctive experience," Benhima said, describing an offer built on close client relationships, advice and innovation.
The bank is pairing the service with a dedicated mobile app that gives clients a consolidated view of their assets, online stock trading and an assistant powered by artificial intelligence. It plans to add investment products over time. Saham Bank has not disclosed a minimum wealth requirement or its fees.
Passing on Morocco's wealth
The launch targets families facing the handover of businesses built in the 1960s and 1970s to children and grandchildren, a transition the bank has made the centerpiece of its marketing. Morocco has more than 6,000 people with at least $1 million in investable assets, according to recent wealth reports.
From Société Générale to Saham
Saham Group agreed in April 2024 to buy Société Générale's 57.67% stake in its Moroccan bank, along with the life insurer La Marocaine Vie, for €745 million ($837 million). The bank, one of Morocco's largest, was renamed Saham Bank in June 2025.
The lender has been growing under its new owner. Net banking income rose 8.5% to 3.36 billion dirhams ($343 million) in the first half of 2026, and profit attributable to shareholders climbed 15.5% to 927 million dirhams ($95 million). Customer loans rose 8.1% to 88.7 billion dirhams, and deposits increased 4.4% to 88 billion dirhams. Earlier this month, Saham Group took its business into Spain.
Elalamy founded Saham Group in 1995 and built it into Africa's largest insurance group outside South Africa. He served as Morocco's minister of industry and trade from 2013 to 2021, and in 2018 sold Saham's insurance arm to South Africa's Sanlam for more than $1 billion. He chairs Saham Bank's supervisory board, and his son Moulay Mhamed Elalamy has taken an increasingly prominent role in the group.
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