United Bank for Africa

Leads the way for
digital banking in Africa

 

A strategic merger to re-define banking in Nigeria

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

Reduction in time to market for new products

Reduction in customer service time

Reduction in time to open a new account

Reduction in cost of transaction across channels

Increase in average number of transactions processed in a day

Reduction in transaction processing time

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

Kennedy Uzoka

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