Developing Trust, Brands and Services in African Banking

The cornerstone of the banking industry is an implied trust, a recognized brand and a distinctive value for money. In Africa, financial services firms, looking to expand in the local markets in order to offer new services to small businesses and attract foreign investment, are discovering that the key to success is creating a multi-threaded strategy that is based on developing a strong brand image and a stable, predictable infrastructure. Multi-threaded strategies combine the business and technology agendas into a series of targeted service offerings delivered to correspond with the rebuilding of infrastructure, while addressing market needs. This concept could be applied to any financial institution; yet, African banks are in a unique position to take advantage of this, because the reduced volume of their existing infrastructure allows them to migrate quickly to newer delivery technologies and, more importantly, establish an infrastructure based on Internet-enhanced, third-party products. Basically, with fewer components of old infrastructure to undo, they are capable of making the migration from legacy systems more easily than the same size organization operating in the US. This is not to say that there is less to do, or that the banking processes in Africa are not as sophisticated.