Online, mobile banking offer convenience

Digitisation has certainly impacted consumers' need for branch banking, and who knows, the next generation may well be the one to bear witness to its eventual disappearance into oblivion.

The period that lapses between one industrial revolution into the next has also been heavily curtailed because of the technological advancements of the last decade, says Martha Murorua, the managing director at Nedbank Namibia.

For instance, it took over a century from the first to the second industrial revolution, and then a similar period of time to evolve into the third industrial revolution around the 1970s. Many experts around the world are of the view that we are now in the fourth industrial revolution, which has taken us a much shorter period of time.

While the increasing pace of digitisation has been coming for decades, the Covid-19 pandemic unleashed changes that seemed unthinkable just a few months ago and compelled us to make rapid change, even faster than what any organisation could imagine, Murorua says.

Various travel and lockdown restrictions on non-essential services coupled with social distancing rules obliged many of us to stay indoors, and the volume of online interactions rose while in person engagements plummeted as expected.

For an industry that has, for hundreds of years, relied on hand-shakes to do business, build relationships and keep customers, this small shift in our reality has massive implications on how we operate going forward. There are many banking functions that may not even be worth the hassle to recreate for the virtual world, she added.

Many customers have realised that the 'new banking normal' is preferential. Online and mobile banking both offer convenience and the generosity of doing banking at your own leisure, she pointed out.

These technological advancements are geography-agnostic as it enables clients to do anything from anywhere and will most likely play a bigger role in our lives even as our movement restrictions ease up. A recent MasterCard survey found that 73% of US customers were transacting online, and a fifth of those were first-time users of online banking.



Innovations

In the UK, the closure of bank branches has accelerated by as much as 70%, and Accenture, a leading global consulting firm, believes there could be as few as 800 brick-and-mortar branches by 2025.

This means we have to make a number of big changes, very quickly, if we want to maintain our relevance in their lives. This realization also underpins the technological innovations that Nedbank Namibia has brought to market, including the introduction of IdentityToday, a technology platform that allows you the convenience of opening a Nedbank account with a selfie.

We need to evolve our services, and how we offer them. We need to innovate faster, so we can stay ahead of the next world-shaking problem. We need to radically adjust our hierarchical structures to bake-in flexibility, alongside the ability to quickly and radically adopt new technology, while fundamentally questioning how we will continue to remain profitable, she pointed out.



Ethics

Organisations need to operate in a heightened ethical manner, as well. There are very few things that can erode relevance as quickly as a basic lack of morality. Nedbank Namibia prides itself on its market conduct principles, aimed at providing our customers with all the information they need to make informed decisions about their money. This is the premise upon which we have solidified our relationship with the Financial Literacy Initiative, in order to engage Namibian consumers on financial education imperatives, Murorua says.

Trust, faith, confidence and belief is the most important asset banks have at their disposal if they want to stay in business. It's incredibly fragile built over years, and destroyed in seconds which makes it even more valuable. Ever since the first clamshells were handed over in exchange for a decent return, or a new starter-cave at generous interest rates, people have been looking to us to help them, and their families and have more than they could without us which is a huge responsibility.

They entrust us with so much of their lives. We may have started viewing price and product and innovation and marketing as more important draw-cards, but, when it all washes away, at the core, is the trust that our clients have that we have their best interests at heart and the successful organisations will be the ones who remain true to this, she added.

This is more important right now than it ever has been before. And not just because the relationship is changing. As things get tougher, the IMF earlier this year released that Africa's growth is expected to drop to -1.6%, her real per capita fall to 3.9% and according to the Namibian central bank's last quarterly bulletin, our immediate economic impact will come primarily from reduced commodity exports and impairment of the tourism and transport industries people will be looking to us and relying on us all the more, she said.

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