Standard Bank in tech push

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 21 May 2007

Standard Bank is rolling out new technologies, worth millions, every month in order to improve business processes, says Jork Fischer, CIO for personal and business banking.

"We don't want to disclose too much detail for competitive reasons," he says, adding: "We are talking hundreds-of-millions of rands, spread over a few years, and between dozens of projects."

Examples already in place include optical character recognition to read the writing on cheques and integrating cellphone technology with online banking "to make the Internet safer". Other innovations include one-time passwords for Internet banking, smart cards and biometric speech recognition.

"We have rolled out Internet banking on cellphone, as well as speech banking - both of these hold great promise."

WAP2-based banking and speech banking platforms have been available for a year now.

"In addition, we are rolling out EMV [Europay, MasterCard and Visa] smart cards that will make the card experience both safer and more user-friendly. This means, for example, that your credit card will be protected with a PIN.

"Technology has allowed for martini banking: anytime, anywhere, anyhow," Fischer jokes. "Seriously though, technology has provided better access, security, choice and convenience to users. Over time, users should notice greater reliability and speed from an always-on banking system. Part of the simplification process is to ensure customers have access to banking service and facilities around the clock."

Looking ahead, Fischer foresees a "greater proliferation of wallets on card and cellphone", as well as greater security. "More virtual services will be dispensed on channels such as airtime and electricity," he says. Ease of access is being enhanced as customer insight is applied more intelligently.

"Customers should also start seeing the streamlining and simplification of processes," he says. "For instance, the same process used when applying for a home loan will be used when applying for a credit card."

Consumers are also likely to see more self-service applications being rolled out, with a new interface for the lending business going live in the first quarter of 2008. "A major rewrite is planned for our branch systems to continue this process."

Like other banks, Standard is also continuously "refining its legacy systems" and spending money on regulatory compliance. "The industry is now coming to the end of system modification [phase] in order to comply."

Fischer says almost a third of Standard Bank's development budget is spent on compliance projects. While he will not disclose the actual figures, he says the sum is "significant" and "amounts to a couple of hundred-of-millions".

Compliance has also seen the bank invest in storage. "The bank has built a number of Petabytes of storage and we are constantly evaluating the appropriateness of our storage strategies. Standard Bank currently retains all its electronic data. Information life cycle management is being introduced to optimise this further."

The bank is always on the prowl for new technology, Fischer adds. "Our bank scans the environment to identify appropriate technology, after which we test the maturity and financial business case prior to deploying it."