Over a period of three days the 5th Annual Retail Banking Africa will gather experts from the retail banking fraternity to discuss on the current trends in the sector brainstorming policies and procedures
Johannesburg, 25 June 2013: As Africa’s key challenges in retail banking lie within delivering secured banking services, creating loyalty programs, exploring new opportunities for client service and serving the diversified population of the region; the 5th Retail Banking Africa 2013 will articulate an industrial roadmap with emphasis on mobile financial services, means of electronic payments, venturing with external financial institutions for tapping new avenues, financial investing in non-banking sectors.
Over a period of three days this forum will gather experts from the retail banking fraternity to discuss on the current trends in the sector brainstorming policies and procedures, embedding a responsible banking culture, exploring opportunities to deliver financial inclusion providing the correct opportunity to learn about the best industry practises and develop strategies for a brighter future in African Retail Banking sector.
The forum was inaugrated with an opening speech from the chairman, Jean Rey, Managing Director – Independent Director Financial Advisor at Forex For Africa, followed by the keynote speech delivered by Rajal Vaidya, Consumer Banking Director of Barclays Africa. This keynote entitled as “The Role of Retail Banking in Sustaining Pan-African Economic Growth”, elaborated on the macro economics and dynamics of the African Banking Environment.
The Regulatory Panel moderated by Jean Rey addressed how effective the current retail banking regulations are in adapting to a business transformation. Mohammed Iqbal Belath, Second Deputy Governor of Bank of Mauritius and Graham Prior, Manager: Financial Surveillance – FirstRand Group Treasury featured in this session, entitled as “Complying with Retail Banking Policies Procedures”.
A dedicated session entitled as,” Time for a Change: From Bricks Mortars to Retail Banking 2013″, brainstormed on the future scope of retail banking focusing on transforming the business from a legacy model to a futuristic model, being more innovative, developing a client-centric banking model and effectively shifting the branch banking model to a branch less banking model across customer markets. This session was presented by Yolande Van Wyk, Chief Executive Officer of FNB eWallets Solutions at First National Bank.
An exclusive CEO PANEL, entitled as “Crafting a Pan-African Retail Distribution Strategy: Expanding Footprints”, focused on the way forward for African retail banking as its prime functions to operate significantly into the growth of the region’s economy. The CEO panellists participating in this session were Ashraf Esmael from Bramer Bank, Inaete Merali from Moza Banco SA, Sanjeev Anand, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at Banque Commerciale du Rwanda and Brett Van Aswegen, , Managing Director: Cards – AFB.
Krish N, Global Practice Head at 3i Infotech, in his presentation titled as ” Innovation across Branchless Banking”, explained the importance of innovative technological solutions to a futuristic branch-less banking option in developed and emerging markets. The need to deliver efficiency through remodelling of retail banking business models, was addressed by Zahid Mustafa, Regional Consumer Banking Director: East and West Africa at Barclays Africa. Funwa Akinmade, Head of Retail Liabilities at Union Bank of Nigeria Plc, explained the scope of capitalizing growth on core product lines through an effective bundling strategy.
Dealing with the customer’s channel of choice by enabling end to end transactions through standardization and maintaining consistency in customer experience across all delivery channels, was brainstormed by Brian Duguid, Managing Executive: Nedbank Integrated Channels – Nedbank Limited in his presentation. Andrea Prazakova, Group Head – Retail SME Banking – ABC Holdings Limited (BancABC) explained the importance of redesigning the process flow to improve customer satisfaction.
The GURU PANEL, entitled as “Growth Proposition – Developing Cutting Edge Retail Banking Services” focused on the need to change the region’s banking practices and strategies according to the current banking structure. This session was joined by six panellists such as Zahid Mustafa, Regional Consumer Banking Director of East and West Africa at Barclays Africa; Andrea Prazakova, Group Head of Retail SME Banking at ABC Holdings Limited (BancABC); Sandeep Sharma, Head of Retail Banking at Fina Bank; Kashif Naeem, Executive Vice President Group Head – Retail and Microfinance at Bank of Khartoum; Craig Smee, Head of Social Media Communication: Retail Marketing at Nedbank Limited and Keriri Muya, Director – ICT Operations at Family Bank Ltd.
Tomorrow, second day of the forum will witness presentations from Kenya Commercial Bank Ltd, Access Prepaid Worldwide – A MasterCard Company, Standard Bank Africa, Sterling Bank Plc, Standpoint Financial Services.
B Ravi Teja, Vice President of Global Consulting at Nihilent, will provide a futuristic view of retail banking practices through mass communication, technical advancements and use on social media in his presentation titled as “Retail Banking in the Future”.
Nihilent is the Silver Sponsor of this forum, along with 3i Infotech as the Associate Sponsor and G4S and MicroStrategy as Exhibitors.
Panel discussions entitled as “Banking is Necessary, Banks are Not! – Getting the Best out of Financial Services” and
” Capturing the Unbanked Population – Lessons learnt from MNOs”, will be featured on the second day involving industry experts such as Hemmanth Singh, Managing Executive: mCommerce – Vodacom, Brian Richardson, Managing Director – WIZZIT, Megan Harrison, , Client Experience Executive – SA Taxi Financial Holdings (Pty) Ltd Marc Joubert, , Head of Financial Services Marketing – JD Group and many others.
The third day of this forum will be dedicated to a day long post conference workshop. The two workshops entitled as “Channel diversification in order to strategies for optimizing financial inclusion” and “Increasing customer satisfaction in the African retail banking sector”. John Aldridge | Retail Banking Payments Specialist, will be conducting both the workshops combining methodologies of elaborating theory knowledge by casestudies, group exercises and interactive discussions.
For more insight on this forum and more information kindly send a mail to mohor.mukherjee@flrminggulf.com
Media Contact:
Mohor Mukherjee
E: mohor.mukherjee@flrminggulf.com
T: + 971 4609 1570
F: +971 4609 1589
URL: http://www.fleminggulf.com/conferenceview/5th-Annual-Retail-Banking-Africa-2013/434
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Author: Mohor Mukherjee from Fleming Gulf. Originally distributed by MyPR.co.za.
