Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /home/ramotsaj/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-word-count/public/class-wpwc-public.php on line 123
Dr Chris Kotze, CEO of FNB Online, opened the 2nd day of the World Wide Web Applications Conference.
He described online banking as the baby of the channels, mobile banking an even younger. More than 150, 000 “banking” users daily. 12-15K new users every month. 35 million transactions monthly. So the Internet is moving R90 billion per month. 150,000 new products sales per annum. Almost 1 million visits www.fnb.co.za per week. When Internet banking falls over, the rest of the bank cannot cope.
Number of positive drivers of online banking usage is starting to outweigh the negatives. For corporates the #1 most important feature is security, followed by availability and performance. Rural areas have more bandwidth constraints than metropolitan areas.
The Internet starting to take a bigger percentage of the channel mix. By 2025 online banking could account for 80% of transactions. Corporates already at higher level. There is expectation by 2025 about 75% of service will be available online.
The Impact on First National Bank (FNB):
- Has to become a global 24/7/365 business
- Very demanding self-service clients
- Lower-cost channel options
- Legacy systems, security and data issues
- Fraud challenges (phishing)
- 3rd party dependencies and joint-ventures
- New competitors
- “Different” workforce and competencies
Chris ended off with a quote from Charles Schwab on how the Internet has changed it’s business. And for Charles Schwab it has not changed business but enhanced it. For FNB it has changed their business fundamentally. In the Q&A a question was asked about mobile banking users. Turns out FNB has more than 500,000 mobile baking users. There’s a big overlap between them and the online banking users i.e. they tend to be the same people or as Chris Kotze said they co-exist. So there is still a long way to go in getting the unbanked into the banking system.
For more on Chris Kotze read this interview on Personal Finance website.