Banks aim to be ‘disruptors’ amid rapidly shifting tech sands

YOU see it in new bank branches. You see it in new bank buildings. You see it in new banking services.

From Standard Bank’s supergreen, glass-fronted corporate building in Rosebank, to its super-cool PlayRoom innovation lab a few blocks away. From FNB’s hip new branch in the Mall of Africa in Midrand, to the digital platform that underpins the FNB Connect network service.

Banks are fast waking up to the fact that they face a rapidly shifting customer landscape. And that — if they themselves don’t participate in this shift, or even lead it — they will be shoved out of the way.

“We’re in a space where the market is rapidly changing in very new ways,” says Yolande Steyn, hand-picked by FNB CEO Jacques Celliers to head up a new division called FNB Innovators.

“Disruptive forces are coming into financial services, with massive changes happening in the payment space, the arrival of bitcoin and blockchain, cashless and mobile banking, direct models — and with the world of insurance about to change as a result of driverless and shared cars. If no one owns cars any more, what will it do to insurance?”

The answer for banks such as FNB is to be the disruptor rather than the disrupted.

Steyn is accustomed to that role. She previously headed eWallet, FNB’s hugely successful service that proved the viability of mobile money at a time when M-Pesa failed to make a dent in the market.

No fewer than 6.7 million people have received money into their eWallets, she says.

Cellphone banking, another area pioneered by FNB a decade ago, still has 3.5 million customers using short codes on their phones. FNB has had an Innovators programme since 2004, but serving as an internal scheme, rewarding implementation of ideas.

“Over time it’s broadened into a deeper employeeengagement programme to look at innovation across the spectrum, and finding ways to share internal intellectual property better,” says Steyn. “We want to create richer, more meaningful innovation of the kind that FNB does all the time, but bring it to the fore, as meaningful innovation for customers.”

Steyn is comfortable gazing into her crystal ball: “We are making a lot of investment in super-computing and data analytics capabilities, and the next step is to take our new understanding about customers and match it to their needs in a way that is seamless.”

This will mean that channels such as branches, cellphone banking, apps or ATMs might not disappear, but the experience of using them will be significantly different.

The key term Steyn uses for the bank’s strategy is not the now-common “omnichannel” — serving customers in any channel or on any platform where they want to be served — but, rather, “optichannel”.

“It just means the look and feel is the same when you move from one channel to the next.

“In the old days you had the cellphone banking team, which was a different team to the app team and online banking team. Now the emphasis is on making sure the customer experience is familiar wherever you go.”

That also means humans won’t be replaced by robots or artificial intelligence any time soon. Rather, AI will be used for data analytics to enhance the bank’s processes.

“AI will be most important in security. You may not want a robot serving you, but you want an army of robots looking after your customer data.”

Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @art2gee