Global Finance magazine, a premier magazine for finance and business, has named Samba Financial Group: "Best Islamic Financial Institution in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in the GCC region" during 2008. Global Finance has announced its first annual awards for the World's Best Islamic Financial Institutions. In its announcement, the Magazine says "The winners of this year's awards are those banks that contributed to the growth of Islamic financing and successfully met their customers' needs for Shariah-compliant products, while creating the foundation for continued fast growth in the future". The Magazine indicated that Shariah-compliant finance is the fastest-growing area of finance worldwide, with more than 300 financial institutions that are either fully Islamic or selling Islamic finance products, in addition to several hundreds more Islamic investment banks and insurance companies, or takaful".

Mr. Eisa M. Al Eisa, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Samba Financial Group expressed his delight for winning the Award. "This Award reflects our enormous and orchestrated efforts to develop Samba's Shariah-compliant banking and financial services, and drives us to proceed with developing our strategy to that direction"