Data and artificial intelligence (AI) are key priorities for Standard Bank’s business and commercial banking (BCB) unit, as it looks to unlock the promise of AI and generative AI.
So said Fezile Dali, CIO for BCB at Standard Bank Group, in an interview with ITWeb.
Formally set up in 2021, the bank’s BCB unit supports small, medium and micro enterprises, and commercial clients across Africa.
Its birth was driven by the need to service the business segment with a turnover under R1.3 billion all the way to zero, according to Dali.
The unit has been described as the “fastest growing” business within the Standard Bank portfolio, contributing approximately 19% of the group’s earnings, based on the 2025 annual results.
During the interview, Dali spoke about the unique technology needs of various business segments, emphasising speed and digitisation for small businesses, and relationship management and industry insights for larger commercial clients.
He further revealed the business unit’s key priorities, highlighting trust in banking, including cyber security and fraud prevention.
Data and AI are among the priorities a CIO can’t “run away from” and must determine how to leverage it within the business, he added, explaining this applies broadly within Standard Bank.
“It’s a key priority for me and for us in the technology shop, making sure we are progressing our adoption and are extracting the value for our clients on multiple fronts. For instance, how they consume our services, how easy we make it for them to access some of the services that we have.
“In the case of a lending product, how do we make it easier for our teams to service the clients when they come to lend from us. Also in our operations processes, we need to know that when a client calls in for X, Y, or Z, we can use GenAI to anticipate what is needed.
“We need to have highly-complex view using the underlying data, to create a full picture, so that we can better service clients as and when they need to speak to us.”
AI will have a significant impact on the enhancement of the relationship manager’s role, giving them access to all the necessary data, he stated.
“Manually that information is a nightmare to just pull and have it ready. With the advent of AI and GenAI, you have a real-life feed of all these insights ready and available.”
Dual divide
Dali was appointed to his current position four months ago, having held several roles within the business, including as Standard Bank’s group chief technology officer.
According to the CIO, the main difference between the roles is that the groupCTO position was more about being responsible for the “factory and the distribution”.
The proximity to the client is there, but it’s not the primary role, he explained. “Your role is more around building resilient, secure, performing functions and capabilities for the bank.”
On the other hand, the move to a CIO role means being the “store manager”. “You see the client deal; you understand their pain. When the client tells you that they can’t find something on the floor, they are talking to you.”
The proximity has also given insight into small business or micro business needs, as this differs from a business that is maintaining over R100 million or R500 million per year, he adds.
“In the lower segments, there is need for speed, digitisation and very low touch. The spaza shop or tavern owner wants to access their digital capabilities instantaneously. They want to be able to accept payments, get access to their money as payments have been made, and they want – as they grow – to have a bank that will understand their needs and help them grow from a financial perspective.
“As you move up the segment towards the commercial segment, their needs differ. Here it’s less about speed and largely about the relationship with the bank. When dealing with a commercial business that’s in the agricultural sector, for example, it’s not about transactability only, it’s not about them paying or accepting payments; it’s about industry insights and the relationship manager understanding their needs from a financing perspective.”
Skills revolution
Turning to skills that are becoming critical within the business unit’s technology environment, Dali said AI is commoditising some of the work that would have been done by skilled engineers, for example.
“Your skill is now becoming how do you better understand and critique the code that’s been produced at scale and made by AI. On one side, we think that we still require the skills and the knowledge of our current staff, and for the growth of the organisation, we still need to play a very big role in terms of acquisition of skills into our organisation.
“Firstly, we are still grounded in core skills. We’re still going to need software engineers, data engineers and data scientists, so that core skill does not necessarily change. There’s an emerging world whereby there are specific AI-related skills.
“When you balance this, you need to ask yourself a question: Are you a technology and an AI company that wants to produce AI products − you’re not. Are you an organisation that wants to leverage AI at scale in doing what you’ve been doing?
“It’s a balance between the core skills that our people have, giving them exposure on leveraging and using GenAI, and always relying on that deep-rooted experience knowledge, or even if it’s just a recently acquired knowledge through academic programmes.
“The deep skills that we’ve already seen emerge in the past 10 years − data science, data engineering, full-stack development, automated testing, testing and quality assurance − will continue to be required. However, we need to enable our staff to leverage the AI capabilities that are out there.”
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