Capitec’s head office just outside of Stellenbosch is big. Really big. The bank’s employees used to work from several different buildings, but this space, called iKhaya (`home’) was designed to bring everyone together. And encourage them to climb the stairs. The large building, with many open spaces connected by bridges and staircases, was only built with two passenger lifts to promote employee well-being. I mention all this because when I sit down with the bank’s CIO, Wim de Bruyn, in his office on the top floor, I’m a little out of breath.
He tells me that the office space was completed around the same time that the first lockdown restrictions were implemented. So, in the beginning, the building largely stood empty. Today, it’s busy. Capitec has embraced a hybrid workforce approach, allowing employees to work from home some of the time. This being said, their culture is very much about the human connection, which means they value and encourage teams to have as much face-to-face time as possible.
As the bank’s CIO, De Bruyn’s role falls under the business development technology function, a business function that, he says, you typically wouldn’t find in other banks. This is, in part, because Capitec doesn’t want to be seen as a bank. It has even dropped the ‘bank’ from Capitec Bank. As such, many of the structures in Capitec aren’t typical banking structures. It’s moved away from a having separate IT and business functions, rather creating different product functions or teams with all the skills needed to build its different digital products. According to De Bruyn, all of this is an indication of where Capitec is headed, and this is ‘beyond banking’.
But this doesn’t mean that they aren’t looking to innovate and improve the banking experience for their customers. For De Bruyn, the most topical trends in the industry, and the ones they’re watching, centre on providing customers with improved banking experiences. These include utilising data, AI and machine learning to deliver hyper personalised experiences, to using blockchain to minimise friction and speed up payments. It’s also using AWS’s Well-Architected Framework.
All of this is an indication of where we are headed and that is to develop a number of things that extend much wider than banking.
“From the start, we’ve been focussed on accessibility. And so our approach to digital innovation is all about how we can enable our clients to bank when they need to, using whatever function they need, wherever they are and at any time of the day.” While one might think that a digital drive may equal a move away from physical branches, he says this is not the case. “The reason we’re so successful digitally is because of our branch network,” he notes. “Our branches actually teach our clients how to be digital. When you visit a branch, you won’t walk out without the app being activated on your own device. We’ve made it possible to become a client using the app and most of the new clients that we’re currently onboarding in this way are clients who have visited our branches and were onboarded with the help of our branch staff.”
Improved experience
This remote onboarding functionality is something that has kept De Bruyn quite busy recently. Using facial recognition, clients can open an account with a simple selfie. The bank compares this image against the Home Affairs database to verify that the person is who they claim to be. This approach has simplified the process of opening an account, making it possible to become a Capitec client in a matter or minutes. “We now have about 30 000 clients a month joining us without visiting a branch. And that number is increasing.” When clients need to sign a contract, the same facial biometrics are used as a signature. “If you become a client online, all of the contracts are signed digitally, using your face.”
He and his team have also been working on improving security when clients use ‘Instant EFT’ payments while shopping online. With Instant EFT, a third party uses screen scraping to access bank account data and automate actions on behalf of the client using their online banking credentials. They believe this is risky, says De Bruyn, which is why they’ve developed Capitec Pay. Here, clients identify themselves with their cellphone number, and not their username or password. The final payment is approved in a pop-up confirmation message in the app. “Our aim is to eliminate screen scraping in the coming months. We’re working closely with all the payment providers to implement this functionality entirely.”
From the start, we’ve been all about accessibility. And so, our approach to digital innovation is focussed on how we enable our clients to bank when they needed, using whatever function they need, wherever they are and at anytime of the day.
Solutions like these align with one of the business’ fundamentals, which is to understand their clients and the problems they face, he says. “We spend a lot of time in the market and we encourage everybody at Capitec to do branch visits so that they can talk to clients and listen to call centre calls to better understand where problems lie. Our teams then work together to come up with solutions.”
For De Bruyn, CIOs are well placed to know the needs of the entire business because they service the entire business. But they also need to ensure that they understand the needs of their customers. When they get this balance right, the possibilities are incredible, he says. “If you take the two examples that I've given about remote onboarding and secure online payments, these projects actually represent new business models. Modern CIOs can no longer just sit back and wait for the business to give them requirements. They need to proactively come up with new ideas, new products and new possibilities.”
* This feature was first published in the Dec-Jan edition of ITWeb's Brainstorm magazine.
* Article first published on brainstorm.itweb.co.za
Share