From Nedbank to Netbank

By Leon Engelbrecht for Nedbank
Johannesburg, 18 Jun 2008

Nedbank, SA's number four bank, has revamped its business banking in order to grab a better share of that market.

Hendus Venter, Nedbank's operating executive for wholesale product and channel management, says the bank has rebranded its online business banking under the name "Netbank" and is offering customers a simpler, more intuitive experience.

The bank has also tightened security by introducing authentication by way of digital certificates on both the client side and at the bank. "Our customers are paranoid, so are we," says Venter.

"Security is of paramount importance," he adds.

Nedbank corporate electronic banking channel manager Petro Botes adds that the client's one-time certificate is generated by a security token that resembles a memory stick and indeed has flash memory to carry the drivers one has to install on the PC that will be used for the interaction.

Venter says Netbank is the culmination of several years' worth of labour. "We've done a lot of work in the last few years to position ourselves for the future," says Venter. "This new business banking portal was designed from the customer in and not from the bank out."

Venter adds that Netbank has moved Nedbank away from a product to a platform approach, which is also the case at rival Standard Bank. Both are doing this to simplify processes and to avoid costly duplications. Nedbank is also seeking to achieve a "single view of the customer" in order to "look at the client's entire value chain".

"We are moving away from being product-specific to being service-specific and channel-agnostic," says Venter. This, he adds, allows them to offer clients multiple channels of interaction. Speaking for a hypothetical client, he says: "I want to choose whether I pay my domestic worker over a cellphone, receive my statement via Internet, etcetera."

Venter adds that the push to give customers a better online experience is also driven by economics. "Online banking clients are two to three times as profitable as traditional [branch] clients," says Venter, a point also recently made by Absa digital channels managing executive Christo Vrey.

"They are more profitable and more locked in," Vrey observed. "They're also very impatient and complain more," he added.

Venter adds that Nedbank has also noticed that many clients, who bank with multiple banks, consider the bank with whom they e-bank as their primary bank, which adds to Vrey's observation of "lock-in".