While South Africa may lag behind the world in several areas, one segment that is world class is banking. South Africans may not realise that the banking systems of the country are quite advanced and even offer features that are unseen even in first world countries.
While South Africans enjoy this banking ecosystem that is fully digital in most respects, they may also not realise that the systems in other countries are very much paper-based.
Leading information management solutions provider OpenText is all too aware of this problem in other countries, and it presented a very enlightening spotlight on this topic at the recent OpenText Summit Africa 2023.
In a breakout session on digital value, Chris Visage, Consultant at iOCO, explained the amazing work done at the Mauritian AfrAsia Bank to bring the company not only into the cloud, but also to a fully digital space.
“The problem was this: [the bank] had very manual processes for everything, usually based on emails and printed paper. For example, if a customer wanted to query their account, they needed to fill out a document, which was then printed out, stored and then manually worked on by employees,” Visage says.
So what did OpenText do for AfrAsia Bank? OpenText worked to create a pipeline for the bank’s various processes that was not only fully digital and automated, but also remote as this work was done around the COVID-19 pandemic.
The result was transformative. With this new digital platform the bank was transformed immensely. Not only did OpenText deliver on the stated goal, but this new way of working opened up new doors in spaces such as risk management and credit scoring. With a digital platform some processes could also be automated, saving both the business and customer time.
To further illustrate the change Visage presented the crowd with the impressive figures. Customer fulfilment rate was now achieved 35 percent faster. Next time you’re on the phone with a bank or any other big company, just keep in mind how much a 35 percent increase in speed really is.
As for the paper problem the bank saw a 60 percent reduction in paper use. Again this is a rather shocking reduction whose positive impact is not only monetary, but also environmental. This 60 percent reduction is overall, but can also be seen at specific bank hubs. As an example a hub would print a minimum of 6 000 pages per day. Under the new OpenText system, this was reduced to 1 500 pages. Visage points out that some printing is needed for record keeping, so there is the possibility that these numbers could be reduced further.
Visage also adds that, per customer, AfrAsia Bank now saves 250 man days of employee work per year, truly showing the power of a digital environment with automation.
