More and more banks in SA are embracing a broader use of technology, as the financial services sector works to respond to the increasing complexity of delivering banking services to customers.
A recent global survey by Bank Systems & Technology and Information Week Analytics suggests that this growth is only the beginning. In terms of which applications are being deployed in the cloud, payment applications (23%), core banking (22%) and retail banking applications (21%) are at the top of the list.
Mobile banking applications came in at 19% but another 19% plan to use the cloud for mobile banking and a further 32% are evaluating the cloud for mobile banking.
Some 70% of those who expressed an interest in cloud computing said the 'ability to meet user demands quickly and achieve scale' was the top consideration.
Last month Absa introduced a mobile application that will enable immediate remote account opening.
The app is for Android-based smartphones and tablet devices, allowing sales consultants to open bank accounts and issue debit cards to new customers in less than 10 minutes.
“This innovative use of mobile technology allows us to extend our reach in many of SA's most poorly serviced areas from a banking perspective, and enable greater numbers of our population to access the formal economy,” says Absa's retail bank chief executive Gavin Opperman.
FNB has also targeted digital banking with an application for tablets and smartphones. According to FNB, the app has an extensive roadmap, but upon release will allow users to have immediate and secure access to their bank accounts; view account lists; view a detailed transactional history; perform transactional services like transfers between accounts, as well as pay beneficiaries
Paul Ruinaard, country manager, Sub-Saharan Africa for F5 Networks, says retail banking has to adapt to the changing nature of its customers. “Back in the late 1980s, the ATM transformed the branch and gave rise to self-service banking on a level that many couldn't have predicted.
“The journey has taken the IT department from figuring out how to integrate with other banks' ATMs into a world where Web applications need to be easy to access from any device, at any time, in any place and failure will no be tolerated,” he says.
From the research, notes Ruinaard, it's pretty clear that financial services think their traffic will be coming from the mobile.
“What we are seeing is a move to multi-channel banking or a channel agnostic approach to banking. This is great for the consumer but puts enormous pressure on the banks to manage the reliability, responsiveness and security of their applications within a distributed application network,” Ruinaard says.
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