Prince Osuagwu
12 March 2008
Lagos — AS the nature of consolidation in the Nigerian banking sector, tends to woo customers towards only the banks with quick turn around service delivery and strategic technological innovations for efficient banking services, the First City Monument Bank, FCMB, may have landed itself a competitive edge with recent deployment of a novel Central Processing Centre, CPC.
The technological innovation which is described as the first in Africa, is targeted towards improving the bank's service efficiency and position it as one of the banks in Africa that others would borrow banking cultures from.
Deployment of this technology, according to the bank, is in line with its pet project, tagged project PACE, meant to achieve a total turn-around and as well repositions the bank to not only face the challenges of the future but also give its competitors and contemporaries a pace difficult to match.
Project PACE actually stands for strategies to achieving a strong Professionalism, Ambition, Creativity and Excellence that would leave competition only gasping for breadth to catch up.
Unveiling the technology to newsmen in Lagos last week, the bank's officials said the Central Processing Center was a production platform for processing all transactions for which the customer does not require an immediate output or direct contact with the processors.
What this means is that with the CPC , all back office processes and practices are moved out of the brick and mortal channels to promote efficiency, increase customer satisfaction and turn branches into mere show rooms instead of the crowded environments called the banking halls in many banks today.
Incidentally, CPC, the bank says, is a home grown idea and perhaps unique in the sense that both conceptualization and execution are carried out by indigenous staff of the bank in collaboration with foreign technical partners. Yet in terms of the software, the bank wriggled out of getting itself tied on the apron of one software giant that may determine its fate when the chips are down, but went for bits and pieces from India, Belgium, America and Lagos to create a solution that one is unlikely to find a replica of it anywhere else.
FCMB Vice-President and Divisional Head of Operations, Nath Ude, explained that with the deployment of CPC, initial contacts for all transactions for which the customer does not require an immediate output or direct contact with the processors, which incidentally is about 25% of the entire transaction, are carried out at the branch, while maintenance on customers' accounts and transaction processing on products are done back-end via an interface mechanism on a workflow engine and the banking application.
Also, the bank's Chief Operating Officer, COO, Anurag Saxena, said that the successful deployment of CPC has resulted in the "reduction of paperwork, less distractions and drastic reduction in errors, effective control model, better TAT (Turn Around Time) on processes and transactions, and reduced work induced stress on staff."
He said, there was a complete reversal of the old order, where processes were more cumbersome and staff across the bank's network had to work long hours to process transactions.
Meanwhile, Head of CPC - Shared Services Group of the bank, Mr Kayode Adigun said the bank's CPC technology was borne out of ideas context amongst staff in collaboration with the bank's technical partners, exploring various technologies and process initiatives from different world class banks and financial institutions resulting in a better process work flow.
According to him, beyond helping to improve service efficiency and customer satisfaction, it is anticipated that the new technology would also attract better rating for the bank by international standards, increase profitability, and efficient management of resources.
The bank said that technology which has run on the bank's platform for five months now have attracted a lot of benefits to the bank.
Head, External Relations Brand Marketing of the bank, Mr Tunde Shofowora, said that in the first month of deploying the technology, the bank's transactions grew in about 17%, accounts opening, upped in about 22% and the banks recent public offer was concluded within given time frame even as it was over subscribed.
He also added that the efficiency experienced from the technology, has quickened activities in the bank, resulting in its issuing share certificates of its recent concluded public offer to its shareholders, quicker than any other bank in the country.
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