Digitization and adoption of AI/ML are high on the ‘to-do’ list of South Africa’s Standard Bank Group:
South Africa’s Standard Bank Group has said recently that 99% of its digital transaction volumes in the country are now cashless, and that this has helped the banking group to cut costs. One of the oldest banks in the world, Standard Bank is now on a mission to add some 10 million customers by 2025 and hopes to leverage the latest technology to achieve this goal. The bank has been cutting its number of branches as customers are increasingly adopting to digital and cashless transactions that they were forced to in the wake of the pandemic and the lockdown.
It has nearly 50,000 employees servicing some 15 million customers in 20 countries across the continent and other countries.
An integrated financial services group, the bank provides banking, insurance, investment as well as non-financial complementary solutions. From January 2021 it operates in 3 key segments – Consumer & High Net Worth Clients, Business & Commercial Clients and Corporate and Investment Banking. Through the latter part of the last decade, the bank has shed its traditional image to become a digitally enabled, diversified services organization, understanding each client better so that it can offer tailored proactive solutions.
MICROSOFT – A MAJOR PARTNER
One of the key steps that the bank initiated to take forward its transformation process is a strategic partnership with Microsoft. The bank has made a substantial investment in Microsoft Cloud. This facilitated innovation and enhanced efficiencies and resilience required to respond to market dynamics and customer needs.
The partnership involves migrating workloads, applications, and platforms to Microsoft Azure as well as workforce collaboration with Azure, PowerApps, Workplace Analytics and Microsoft Teams.
The two entities have set up the African Digital Foundry, a strategic alliance to co-create unique solutions through latest technology for Africa’s consumers. Through the Foundry, the bank and Microsoft have designed and created go-to-market digital services related to trade, payment and risk-based (lending and insurance) solutions. They are now proposing to develop ecosystems to enable digital trading.
The bank and Microsoft are also bringing together resources and know-how to provide relevant digital skillsets to the youth of the country so that they are ready to take on the digital challenges of the future. Developing digital skills and capabilities among SMEs is also on their agenda.
POWER BI MODEL
In 2017, the bank adopted Microsoft’s self-service Power BI model and started working on predictive and prescriptive models, a critical shift from an earlier platform of descriptive analytics. Its Insurance Business group collaborated with Microsoft’s BI Data Visualization team to use AI and ML to predict and accurately target customers. The bank stays current on customer needs through data insights. Subsequently, the BI Data Visualization team built the foundation for the company’s self-service BI and by 2020, the bank’s Microsoft Teams channel for Power BI included more than 3,000 members.
DIGITAL INFRA WITH AWS
The bank has an ongoing partnership with Amazon Web Services for developing digital infrastructure, digital ecosystems and future-ready solutions that help its customers and partners. Building on a relationship that enabled the bank’s migration to the cloud, the collaboration created the African Innovation Lab, an incubator and accelerator of large-scale innovation projects and new business models that deliver unique client experiences. Now, there is an AWS Cloud Center of Excellence within Standard Bank, featuring a dedicated team focused on facilitating the migration to the cloud and building AWS training and certification programs to up-skill all employees.
The bank, meanwhile, continues to use AWS services, including data analytics and ML, to automate financial operations and enhance existing applications and develop new and more personalized banking and investment experiences.
The bank has also implemented TCS BaNCS Cloud for digital claims transformation in short-term insurance. The product is offered as a SaaS model on AWS Cloud and it is helping the insurance unit to harmonize more than 60 products spread across 4 claims administration platforms, enabling faster and more accurate claims processing. The solution integrates with 16 different downstream applications, including the enterprise GL system, payment gateway, CRM, business intelligence solutions as well as all other peripheral systems identified in the bank’s insurance technology roadmap.
In June 2020, the bank also has an agreement with Salesforce.com to manage its digital platform. It is just a follow-up of the agreements with Microsoft Azure and AWS. This has made the bank almost 100% in digital banking. It is a full switch from an offline-focused business model to a digitally run platform.
Sim Tshabalala, Group CEO of the Group says: “We don’t want to be the shop; we want to be the mall. We want to provide both our own services and the services of our partners in the Standard Bank Group ecosystem.”
The bank’s platform-based business model has helped it to stay ahead of the competition, and successfully help drive business growth in Africa. Clients can now come on board the platform and create products and services that suit their businesses.
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