Africa`s financial sector is steadily moving towards a paperless, automated environment, opening the door for financial solutions companies.
Xpertek general manager Barry Leonard told ITWeb that this trend is mainly driven by an inflow of foreign funding and investment into African economies. Many countries on the continent are thus striving for improved efficiencies, cost cutting and a reduction of human intervention in banking processes.
"SA`s financial sector is currently much more technologically advanced than most other African countries, where many of the processes are still paper-based. But these countries are starting to understand that automation will eliminate fraud and human error, which will streamline banking," Leonard states.
Recently established, the Xpertek Group is currently active in 18 countries, at 43 sites, including clients in the Bahamas and Barbados.
Leonard claims that, as a result of financial solutions, countries such as Swaziland and Kenya have seen significantly improved productivity, cost saving, return on equity and process efficiency.
"Africa is a very competitive environment, where clients readily move from bank to bank, depending on the quality of service and benefits that a bank offers. Unlike SA, where clients are largely restricted to the four major banks, a country like Kenya has 48 banking institutions," Leonard says.
"Swaziland introduced a financial software solution and the cheque-clearing time in that country has decreased from seven to three days - that is more efficient than in South Africa, where it still takes seven days for cheque clearance."
Xpertek`s SFI Payment Suite is designed specifically to improve the effectiveness of customer-initiated payments, Leonard explains. "Competition is fierce, margins are tight and technology is rapidly evolving, while the cost of processing high volumes of payments remains extremely high. In addition, manual processing, coupled with human error, can cause delays, customer dissatisfaction, duplication of costs and low productivity."
The company is currently seeking to further consolidate its position in Africa and is preparing to conclude a significant deal in South Africa, Leonard says.
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