National Bank of Greece - a tech power house in Europe
The bank has followed a 5-step strategy to gain high customer acceptance:
Athens-based global bank, the National Bank of Greece, offers financial products and services for corporate and institutional clients as well as private and business customers. It was the first Greek bank to take up large-scale transformation starting 2018 and this effort has helped it gain a competitive advantage by having a totally new way of working.
FULLY DIGITAL ONBOARDING
The bank has successfully reengineered its core processes and assigned customer-facing responsibilities to many members of the staff, who were hitherto stuck in completing the mundane tasks of meeting operational needs using inept technologies. The bank was the first in the country to introduce fully digital onboarding for individuals and businesses, as well as the first to offer digital consumer and business loans. It has some 3 million active digital users, which is nearly one third of the market. It has systematically invested in tech infrastructure, including replacing an aging CBS, becoming one of the pioneering tech-enabled banks in the whole of Europe,
KEY PARTNERS
Two key partners for the bank in this transformation process have been SAS and Microsoft. It successfully implemented the SAS platform in combination with the cloud systems of Microsoft Azure. It now has SAS Viya on Azure. It has also set up an enterprise analytics and decisioning engine, managed by a Business Analytics Center of Excellence, which functions as a catalyst in the plans for integrating new analytics technologies into specific daily operations. SAS Viya is helping it to achieve the targets, including operationalizing analytics and capitalizing on the power for achieving strategic goals.
SAS Viya has in-built capabilities of self-service data mining, AI and ML and this along with the flexibility of Azure, helps the bank move faster from design phases to rollout phases. What is advantageous is the open technology that the platform is based on, which allows developers use code from many different programming tools.
Pantelis Maraveas, AGM, Retail Segments, Bank Analytics and Liability Products at the bank, explains that SAS Viya has everything that the bank needs to analyze and visualize data. “Therefore, each time a new application is needed, we know it is available on the platform,” he adds. The bank has 5.5 million retail customers, 380 branches and 1500 ATMs.
AMBITIOUS PROJECT
The bank has also successfully completed a project, called Project Cosmos, which included the implementation of a new CBS - Infosys Finacle. In the first phase of the project, the bank migrated its corporate and SME loan operations to the cloud native platform. It has also migrated 60% of its loan book to this platform and its back-end is not fully on the cloud.
The bank’s Group COO Stratos Molyviatis claims that Project Cosmos is `one of the biggest technology projects ever done in Greece’ with an active engagement of more than 550 people from the bank
and its vendors.
Another successful digital initiative has been the launch of the digital onboarding. The bank collaborated with Inform, a member of Austriacard Holdings, for this, which ensured that the onboarding is through its mobile app, the first to be introduced in the Greek market. Any Greek citizen can open through the NBG Mobile Banking app a savings account and obtain a debit card and credentials for the internet and mobile banking services of the bank. The process is carried out entirely using a smartphone, and the verification of the user’s identity is done through a representative with a live video conference.
I-BANK STORES
The bank has set up i-bank stores in Athens and Thessaloniki. These are concept stores, offering a unique experience on electronic self-service banking. The i-bank store is a modern, multi-purpose venue where a customer can discover the solutions offered by the bank like internet banking, phone banking, mobile banking, ATM, APS and standing orders. While at the i-bank store, customers can opt to relax in the lounge area, surf the internet or make use of the augmented reality applications. In addition, there is an amphitheater where they can participate in education workshops, attend technology seminars and interesting presentations. The bank has collaborated with Microsoft for i-bank stores solution, which runs on Slates - tablet PCs.
The bank is now experimenting new applications like video banking and AR technology and an info kiosk with touch screens.
5 KEY STEPS TO SUCCESS
In implementing its digital transformation program, the National Bank of Greece has adopted 5 key steps - awareness, onboarding, engagement, sales and community. And decisively the bank has succeeded in this strategy. Today, it enjoys the largest digital customer base in Greece, and every month, 1.65 million customers are active on one of its platforms and/or apps. Its apps have more than 3.5 million downloads in Google Play Store and Apple’s AppStore. It sells 800 products and processes more than 200,000 transactions every single day.
This article has been compiled based on publicly available information on the web, particularly the bank’s own website.