BMI-T highlights IT opportunities in the SA banking sector

BMI-TechKnowledge, African ICT research house, is compiling a highly focused report on IT opportunities in the South African banking sector. The report is crucial at a time when investment in banking technologies is becoming increasingly complex.

More than most other industries, financial institutions rely on gathering, processing, analysing and providing huge amounts of information in order to meet the needs of customers and improve their internal efficiencies. Given this strategic importance of information in banking, it is unsurprising that banks are among the earliest and most sophisticated adopters of automated information processing technology.

Reductions in operating costs through streamlining back-office processing and eliminating error-prone manual input of data is the foremost reasoning, but financial institutions also see opportunities to serve current customers and attract new ones by offering new products and services and also enhance the convenience and value of existing products and services. Additionally, with more powerful data storage and analysis technologies, banks are able to develop and implement more sophisticated risk- and information-management systems.

The South African banking sector is regarded as world-class and has implemented many progressive IT initiatives to maintain this status. Technological innovation has caused the boundary between banking and IT to become so blurred that a South African bank operates simultaneously as an Internet service provider. The report will cover the major areas of technology, segmented into both infrastructure and software, while also looking at services, products, adoption trends, investment strategies and back-office processes, among others.

BMI-T believes that one of the current technology priorities for banks is the implementation of a sophisticated customer relationship management and data warehousing solution. "Banks need to build a unique relationship with each individual client and sieve through millions of daily transactions from various touch-points like call centres, ATM facilities, the Web, mobile banking and branch visits and convert those touch points into a knowledge base," says Miranda van Rensburg, BMI-T analyst and report co-author.

BMI-T states that the key challenge in the near future will be back-end IT integration and consolidation with the aim of delivering a unified IT infrastructure that integrates the multiple channels. Such activities will be essential for process efficiency and cost savings, and the vision of a single view of the customer will remain dominant.

"Another key factor is the disillusionment of Internet banking, which has hit most banks hard. According to BMI-T, the key to the success of the Internet channel is recognition that it forms just part of a multi-channel approach that will include traditional branch structure, mobile and telephone banking services and ATMs, as well as emerging hybrid branch-like Internet kiosks," continues Van Rensburg.

BMI-T end-user research indicates that consumers are increasingly spreading their financial service activities across the channels, rather than consolidating on one or two channels.

BMI-T`s report hopes to highlight these, and other, key investment trends and strategies. Among them is a plethora of possible technology opportunities including security, smart cards, networking, Internet banking, digital signatures, CRM, data warehousing and management, mobile technologies and many more.

"Through this report, BMI-T will attempt to elucidate this complex and unpredictable sector to provide insight into the many lucrative IT opportunities in the South African banking sector," concludes Van Rensburg.