Banks across Africa turn to IBM hybrid cloud and AI solutions

Banks across Africa have turned to IBM hybrid cloud and AI solutions. Major financial institutions across Africa have chosen IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI capabilities to enable digital innovation and continue developing digital-first solutions, thereby expanding access to financial services across the continent.

COVID-19 will continue to accelerate the already rapid developments in Africa’s financial services sector, accelerating the adoption of digital technology to increase financial inclusion. By 2025, over 475 million Africans are likely to access mobile internet. Digital and mobile play a crucial role in supporting the delivery of digital financial services to consumers who trade on their mobile phones, according to the GSMA – The mobile economy Sub-Saharan Africa 2020. Hybrid cloud solutions have become increasingly critical to enable smooth and secure digital banking experiences as banks focus their resources on open innovation, security, and high-value services.

“Enterprises, especially those in highly regulated industries like financial services, face unique challenges when it comes to balancing innovation and regulatory compliance,” says Alan Peacock, General Manager, IBM Cloud.

Also said, “For decades, IBM has been fuelling the transformation of the financial services industry, bringing IBM’s trusted industry experience and leadership in security and data privacy to help banks modernize, transform operations and drive innovation.”

According to IBM’s COVID-19 future of business survey, the pandemic spurred digital transformation for more than 59 percent of participating organisations, and more than 75 percent of responding executives expect changing customer behaviour to continue after COVID-19. As financial services businesses accelerate their transformation, IBM hybrid cloud and AI technologies are assisting them in their efforts to advance digitisation throughout the continent.

“In the past year we have seen banks navigate changes brought on by a growing preference for digital and mobile solutions, increasing smartphone penetration and the demand for convenience, innovation, and simplicity from today’s modern consumer, says Angela Kyerematen-Jimoh, Regional, General Manager for IBM North, East and West Africa.

Further explained,  “As banks across the continent take advantage of the opportunity to provide digital financial services which boost financial inclusion, IBM is working with Africa’s leading financial groups to deliver intelligent, cloud-based, digital-first innovation through IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI capabilities.”

Ecobank, a pan-African banking behemoth with operations in 33 African nations, has implemented a hybrid cloud strategy to reach millions of people throughout the continent. Ecobank switched its flagship mobile banking application to IBM Cloud to take advantage of on-demand resource capacity that can support abrupt surges in traffic on its mobile banking services. Ecobank also has access to other IBM cloud services, which they may leverage to create more innovative, digital-first solutions to better serve their customers.

Ecobank is on an accelerated digital banking transformation journey, with over 12 million customers on its main mobile application, and plans to extend its digital products and grow the 30 million digital transactions it presently conducts on its platforms. As part of this journey, the Pan-African banking conglomerate has developed scalable business solutions that allow for easy connection with third-party suppliers while maintaining a growing customer base on its open digital banking platform.

Nedbank, a pan-African bank, has set out to provide consumers with exceptional digital experiences. To do so, the bank is using a hybrid cloud strategy to modernise its core banking operations and has worked with IBM to help bring digital goods and services to life.

Nedbank investigated a hybrid multi cloud approach, adopting the IBM Garage methodology to use IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, to take advantage of the flexibility and agility given by modern cloud technologies on this digitalisation journey. The bank was able to go deep and explore new solutions thanks to IBM Garage, and accomplished what would have taken months in a week. Nedbank turned to IBM Cloud Pak for Integration to help them establish a streamlined and standardised integration approach to their cloud strategy when they needed to combine complicated legacy systems. As part of their modernisation and positioning for future innovation, Nedbank may now move their old systems to the cloud and combine them with other cloud-based apps they use.

The Pan African Banking and Financial Group’s Attijariwafa bank has used IBM hybrid cloud solutions software to accelerate the digitization of its banking operations and deliver new digital services to consumers in a safe and flexible environment. The major bank will streamline and better integrate front-and back-office processes, as well as modernise business and IT operations, using IBM Cloud Paks, which are built on Red Hat OpenShift.

Attijariwafa Bank will modernise and manage its core banking systems, such as its corporate banking application, using IBM Cloud Paks in a secure, integrated, and readily expandable environment. This will enable for a rich and straightforward user experience while also shortening the time it takes to bring new products to market. It will also allow bank workers to concentrate their efforts and time on providing better service to their customers.

The bank’s digital transformation goal is supported by this collaboration with IBM, which allows for a complete modernization of the bank’s operations in an open, hybrid cloud environment.

United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA), Africa’s global bank with headquarters in Nigeria and operations in 23 countries, has set a target to considerably increase transaction volume and retail market penetration over the next few years. To do so, they’ll need to reach out to the unbanked, use digital banking to acquire new consumers, and use a “No Transaction Must Fail (NTMF)” effort to keep existing customers.

UBA put up a scalable, private cloud environment that is cost-effective using IBM POWER9-based servers, Flash system storage, and IBM PowerVC (Power system virtualization & cloud management), taking the first step toward embracing a hybrid cloud paradigm.

Customers’ needs are changing as they use many channels to get financial services and want personalisation. The Co-operative Bank of Kenya turned to IBM to update their core banking platform and reach out to its customers through various channels, including mobile and internet, while providing personalised services based on data. They needed technology that would enable their staff to cooperate across teams to streamline operations, optimise customer data, and achieve goals like infrastructure and maintenance cost reduction.

They now have better insights into consumer data, faster query answers, and faster time-to-market on new offerings across channels thanks to IBM Power and FlashStorage solutions, which are all supported by highly available, scalable, cloud- and AI-ready technology.

Banco Mais, a major Mozambican bank, came to IBM for assistance in streamlining business processes and reducing turnaround times for customer-facing services. Banco Mais needed to produce financial service products quickly to maintain and gain market share in the face of an increasingly competitive market locally.

Banco Mais used IBM Business Process Manager on Cloud to launch projects rapidly and deliver process application solutions without having to invest in IT infrastructure. They were able to build, test, run, and monitor their business processes in a fraction of the time it would have taken them otherwise by using this IBM Cloud service. As a result, Banco Mais improved customer experiences by reducing loan turnaround time by 60% and reducing the time it required to install services that took 3 to 4 months by 85%.

IBM announced the global availability of IBM Cloud for Financial Services and IBM Cloud Satellite, the industry’s first financial services-ready cloud platform. The IBM Cloud for Financial Services, which was first announced in 2019, is aimed to enable financial institutions, their partners, and FinTechs decrease risk and innovate quickly by including built-in rules that are followed by the entire ecosystem. Regardless of where their data lives, IBM Cloud Satellite provides a secure, unified layer of cloud services for clients across environments, delivering security, data privacy, interoperability, and open standards prevalent in hybrid cloud environments.