A Strategic Merger
- United Bank for Africa PLC is a leading financial services group in sub-Saharan Africa, with presence in 20 African countries, as well as the United Kingdom, the United States of America and France.
- The bank was formed as a result of a merger between United Bank for Africa and Standard Trust Bank in 2005. The merged entity partnered with Infosys Finacle to overhaul its legacy systems and upgrade to a unified technology platform.
- With a strong technology platform, a renewed strategy and the benefits of synergies United Bank for Africa continues to play a key role in the economic development of Nigeria.
Going Truly Digital Inside-Out
Africa has a large base of young consumers between the age of 15 to 24. With this demographic of customers being a digital first generation, it was imperative for banks to embrace the digital revolution. United Bank for Africa realized that it needed to be digital to the core to support its growth aspirations across its operations in 19 countries. The bank upgraded to Finacle’s robust and open digital banking platform to lay the right foundation to deliver a consistent, seamless and frictionless experience across channels, devices and touch points.
What Did They Look To Achieve?
- Consolidate its strategic advantage across 19 countries
- Build a strong technology foundation to capitalize on the impending opportunity in Africa
- Deliver delightful digital experiences to the new generation of customer
- Achieve extensive automation to be agile in the digital world
Delivering a Unified Experience Across Channels
With Sub-Saharan Africa all set to breach the 500 million mobile subscriber base, smartphone penetration is at an all-time high. The millennial population is extremely tech savvy and it is vital for any business to deliver an immersive experience on the mobile and internet channels. United Bank for Africa, being one of the first movers to capitalize on this boom in digitization, overhauled its internet and mobile banking applications. UBA transformed its digital channels by capitalizing on Finacle’s unified digital engagement platform that would empower the bank to offer seamless and consistent banking experience across channels.
Benefits Realized
- 77% Reduction in time to market for new products
- 67% Reduction in customer service time
- 67% Reduction in time to open a new account
- 80% Reduction in cost of transaction across channels
- 133% Increase in average number of transactions processed in a day
- 30% Reduction in transaction processing time
Client Quote
“At UBA, we have always looked to drive greater financial inclusion across 20 countries in Africa. It has become vital for banks to have a strong technology architecture in place to provide a customer experience on par with digital disruptors across channels while accelerating innovations across new business models. With Infosys Finacle, we now have a strong digital suite that enables the bank to drive growth while providing a seamless banking experience across Retail, Corporate and SME customers.”
Kennedy Uzoka
Group Managing Director,
UBA Group
Cashing In on the True Potential of APIs in Corporate Banking
United Bank for Africa leveraged on APIs for transaction authentication and reconciliation for its corporate customers. The bank serves a diverse set of customers with different reporting and transaction tracking requirements. UBA wanted to leverage Finacle’s APIs in integrating the core banking solution with the corporate customer’s ERP solution and reconcile their branch transactions with their database. The bank has benefifitted in terms of providing customers a better way to track transactions and reconcile sales & inventory online. This has helped UBA deepen relationship with their customer leading to increased business volume with the bank recognizing NGN 25 billion in collection turnover annually.
Highlights
- Consume third party APIs within Finacle scripts
- Leveraged restful APIs through the web for online rendition of transaction details
- Shell scripts were used to call APIs and respond on URL
- Wraps third party APIs and exposes them for internal consumption in Finacle script
