R
The Voice for Banking and Finance in Africa
www.technologybanker.com
January 2013 ÂŁ3.99
Year 2013: Social media and smart devices will rule, customers will be more demanding How much does poor customer service cost you?
The Profitable Reality of Rural Mobile Networks
Amazon: AWS Cloud Computing
2013 is the year for always connected customers, and organisations will be under pressure to pre-empt their needs You know
Mike Fitzgeral, Altobridge Chief Executive, presents a case for the profitability of rural mobile networks
We find out more about cloud computing from the first company that introduced its commercial concept
Human Capital Performance Improvement Audit Are you completely satisfied with the Return on Investment (ROI) from your current training? Are your training budgets driven by business goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? Are you holding training vendors accountable for quantifiable business improvements? Based on over 25 years of providing the BEST! Training, Communication and Consulting Solutions to the banking industry worldwide, the leaders of Global Bankers Institute have designed the Human Capital Performance Improvement (HCPI) Audit. The HCPI Audit is the first-of-its-kind service to offer the following benefits: 1) Ongoing Performance Improvement Plan based on cascading Strategic and Operational Goals. 2) Comprehensive Training Plan with behavioral outcomes aligned to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Performance Measures (KPMs) resulting in a concrete Return on Investment for all training. 3) Effective Training showing measurable benefits in Sales, Customer Satisfaction, Operations Productivity and Quality, Employee Motivation, Risk, and Compliance, as well as any other identified bank goal. 4) Efficient Use of Training Budget through improved curriculum priorities and vendor selection and negotiation. 5) Holding Training Vendors Accountable by making them partners in the HCPI Audit process and requiring that they accept responsibility for delivering measureable improvement through their programs. Please contact me to let us know how we may best serve you. Global Bankers Institute brings experience, innovation and value, providing the BEST! Training, Communication and Consulting solutions to the financial services industry.
Dr. Linda Eagle Founder and President Global Bankers Institute 245 Park Avenue New York, NY 10167 +1.212.579.5500 ext. 3106 +1.646.236.7538 (mobile) linda.eagle@globalbankersinstitute.com www.globalbankersinstitute.com
Global Bankers Institute
FROM THE EDITOR
Welcome to Technology Banker - Informing, Influencing and Insipiring Business Welcome to our first edition for 2013. True to tradition, we have our very own predictions for this year, and we also asked our interviewees to share their own expectations for 2013. We think that, in 2013, Social Media will play a stronger part in the developing of the banks’ brands and in delivering customer service. Twitter and Facebook will be powerful platforms for banks to address their customers’ concerns. Both platforms will become a part of both the banking sector’s marketing and customer service strategy. Consequently, banks that refuse to engage customers in the social media sphere will lose out.
And risk damaging their brand. First, though, we have some correction from the December issue. Infosys has informed us that Equatorial Trust Bank was no longer their customer during the time of reporting. They have, however, installed a state of the art Finacle system at I&M Bank Kenya. If you have company news or new product release that you want to share with our readers, please feel free to e-mail me at hope.varnes@technologybanker.com Wishing you a Happy and Successful New Year! Hope Varnes, Editor
CONTENTS Page 4 Year 2013: Social media and smart devices will rule, customers will be more demanding 2013 is the year for always connected customers, and organisations will be under pressure to pre-empt their needs Page 6 Video Banking: Can this be a reality in Africa? Page 8 The Profitable Reality of Rural Mobile Networks Mike Fitzgeral, Altobridge Chief Executive, presents a case for the profitability of rural mobile networks Page 13 View from the Top: What Do Experts Expect for 2013? Find out what IT businesses expect in 2013
Page 17 Executive Interview: Interview with Barry Coatzee: ‘Getting rid of cash is probably as feasible as the paperless office’ iVeri’s Chief Executive and Founder, Barry Coatzee shares his views on cashless society Page 20 New Product Release: Insight 5.2: Application Performance Monitoring Solution from INETCO Systems Stacy Gorkoff - VP of Strategic Market, INETCO Systems Ltd answers our questions regarding application performance management Page 22 Tech Page: Do you know your Bits from your Bytes? We try to answer how much data customers use on popular internet applications
Page 25 Amazon Web Services: Cloud Computing Pioneer We find out more about cloud computing from the first company that introduced its commercial concept Page 30 Voice from Africa: Africa’s Technology Landscape from the Eyes of a Technology Expert Page 31 Events for your Diary Page 32 New Appointments IT, Telecom and Banking Events you should not miss Page 34 Vendors Directory A list of suppliers for your infrastructure and banking solution needs For Private Use Only
Publisher - Stefan Grossetti Stefan.grossetti@technologybanker.com
Sales & Marketing - Jenny Howard Jenny.howard@technologybanker.com
Editor - Hope Varnes Hope.varnes@technologybanker.com
Managing Editor - Remi Akinjomo Remi.akinjomo@technologybanker.com
Deputy Editor - John Bennett John.bennett@technologybanker.com
Design & Creative - Monika Derfinakova Monika.derfinakova@technologybanker.com
Technology Banker Web Site www.technologybanker.com
UK
Contact Details:
Technology Banker Offices:
Technology Banker is a registered trademark of Technology Banker Group. All rights relating to the content of the publication are reserved to the rightful owners.
Ground Floor, Breakspear Park, Breakspear Way Hempstead, Hertfordshire HP2 4TZ, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 1442 345 379 Fax: +44 (0) 1442 345 001
ABC application approved.
www.technologybanker.com | 3
FEATURE
Year 2013: Social media and smart devices will rule, customers will be more demanding Across the world, 2012 was a year when Social Media wielded its power and competition in mobile devices intensified. It influenced policies, fooled people into believing Morgan Freeman was dead and even helped in emergency rescues By Grey Thomas their mobile money services one after the other in September. Now that 2012 has been and gone, and 2013 ushers in, we take a look at what the technology industry has in-store, especially for the banking industry.
Customers will be always connected
According to OVUM, social media and smart devices are creating a new culture of online, always connected customers. And as a result new analytics solutions, multichannel metrics, and better collaboration tools will be crucial in 2013, as enterprises feel the pressure to understand and pre-empt the needs from this new breed of customers. Aphrodite Brinsmead, Senior Analyst, Ovum
P
rotests against SOPA kick-started January 2012, with popular news site Reddit and Wikipedia orchestrating a blackout that finally convinced Larry S. Smith, House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative, to drop his proposed SOPA bill. May saw Facebook went public; which was probably the biggest and most controversial technology story of 2012. For its initial public offering, Facebook’s share price was valued at $38, making it the most expensive company to ever file an IPO. Within 30 seconds of trading on Nasdaq, Facebook sold 82 million shares. However, investors suffered, up to $10 billion loses, when the company’s share price dropped down to $10 by 1st of June. June marked the entrance of Google and Microsoft in the tablet market and July was a great month for Samsung which won the Apple patent lawsuit by being ‘not cool enough.’ 2012 has also been the year of mobile money in Nigeria as FirstBank, Zenith Bank, Visafone and Etisalat launched
4 | Technology Banker January 2013
In its 2013 Trends to Watch: Customer Experience and Interaction report, Ovum looks at some of the important changes in the customer experience and interaction market, detailing how technologies are evolving to meet new consumer demands, and providing recommendation for both enterprises and vendors. Ovum has identified four main trends that will impact the customer experience market over the next couple of years: • As social media response teams move into the contact centre, the adoption of new social media management tools will increase. Social media will become an important part of enterprises’ customer experience strategies • Mobile self-service will become more intelligent, and customers will have the ability to request a call-back from within a mobile application. It will become easier to transfer a query from a self-service application to voice, chat or e-mail; and agents will be sent customer data so that they are better prepared to answer queries
(L-R)* Group Head, Infotech Department, Zenith Bank, Mr. Francis Chukwunyem; Chief Commercial Officer, Etisalat Nigeria, Mr. Wael Ammar and General Manager, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), Mr. Bolaji Lawal at the Launch of Etisalat EasyWallet • Real-time and predictive analytics vendors will experience significant growth as enterprises look at ways to understand and pre-empt customer queries. Analytics will be the enabler for understanding and improving the customer experience. Traditionally segregated applications such as performance management, business intelligence, and customer feedback will be merged into voice of the customer (VOC) analytics suites that help enterprises to view and compare data across different stages of the customer lifecycle
lifecycle, and support and integrate data internally. It makes sense for enterprises to create collaborative customer experience teams in order to align technology and data strategies across product, IT, marketing, and customer support,” says Aphrodite Brinsmead, senior analyst at Ovum. Although contact centres have been slow to adopt social and mobile, Ovum believes that these technologies will be important for customer service developments in 2013.
• Many enterprises will have a mixture of cloud and premise-based customer service solutions • Although some larger enterprises are adopting cloud solutions, core automated call distribution • (ACD) functionality is likely to remain on-premise for the foreseeable future because of existing investments and mentality. Enterprises will deploy new multichannel applications and analytics in the cloud as they have the need for these tools and as they become more widely available Ovum advises businesses to support internal operations and maintain efficient contact centres while looking at new ways to track and understand the customer experience. As businesses rely on vendors to provide new analytics solutions, multichannel metrics, and better collaboration tools, vendors have to step up and add these capabilities fast, or else risk losing business.
‘Enterprises need to support today’s customers by providing timely and accurate responses via mobile, web, and voice channels. In order to succeed, they must address customer needs at every stage of the customer lifecycle, and support and integrate data internally.’ Aphrodite Brinsmead, senior analyst at Ovum
“Enterprises need to support today’s customers by providing timely and accurate responses via mobile, web, and voice channels. In order to succeed, they must address customer needs at every stage of the customer
www.technologybanker.com | 5
FEATURE
Video Banking: Can this be a reality in Africa? By Grey Thomas It can be said that African banks are not necessarily seen as world leaders in customer service. Although, it is not due to lack of efforts from the industry, but rather due to the many challenges they face. Due to spread out populations, it is expensive and difficult to have branches in convenient locations for many communities, and to have these open at convenient hours for most working people. The fact that potential customers have very low disposable income is also a major challenge. However, if banks want to compete against mobile operators in providing financial services to the majority of the African population they have to overcome the challenges ahead and improve their service provision. With customers now able to choose from more banking options than ever before, to remain stable and retain their customer base, a bank needs to make its customers feel that their best interests are being addressed. Additionally, with social media becoming more popular in Africa, consumers who feel they have been treated badly or just inconvenienced by their bank will share their views with the world, turning even a single bad incident into a PR disaster. In short, banks need to vastly improve their customer experience to survive - and fast. Gene Pranger, Founder and CEO of uGenius
The search for tools to make life easier for customers, so as to keep them coming in, is an endless pursuit for all businesses. And it has produced world-changing technologies from steam engine to smart phones. In the banking industry, it produced core banking systems, ATMs, debit cards and online banking. And the latest banking innovation is video banking.
What is Video Banking? Video banking allows customers to deal with real customer service representatives, as they would in their branch, via a secure video link. The technology also has all of the automated features the customer would find at their ATM, as well as on their online banking or telephone
6 | Technology Banker January 2013
Their branches now only have managers and some sales staff, which has cut operating costs considerably while improving their customer service record. They have also been able to open virtual branches at member employers’ locations, allowing customers to conduct normal transactions as well as do things that require face to face interaction like opening accounts or applying for loans, without leaving their place of work. The company has so far deployed 169 Personal Teller Machine to 36 financial institutions in three countries, says Gene Pranger.
The big question is: Is Africa Ready for video banking? banking system - effectively giving the user all of the banking facilities available in just one unit, in whichever way they want to deal with their banks. The technology has the potential of reducing banking cost as banks don’t need staffed branches to offer full banking service in one location. According to Gene Pranger, Founder and CEO of uGenius, video banking accepts cash and cheque deposits, cash-in cheques, and dispenses cash, coins and cheques. It also accepts account payments and transfers. Customers can also use it to open new accounts or apply for loans. With video banking, African banks can offer services in more locations than they ever could with conventional banking. The can even open their own “branches” in large workplaces, so people can do their banking during times that are convenient to them without leaving work. This means the bank can centralise its operations and have the bulk of its staff in one place, making the infrastructure much more stable and easy to manage, as well as cheaper to run. They can offer services 24 hours a day if there is a demand for this from customers, and they can also give customers more self-service banking options than from a regular ATM, meaning there are more transactions the savvy customer can do without having to actually speak to a representative at all. Video banking, developed by Utah based technology company uGenius, is a reasonably new concept. It deployed its first personal teller machine in 2004. But already it has some powerful success stories. Coastal Federal Credit Union in North Carolina (a bank with $2 billion in assets), one of the earliest banks to embrace the technology has found that the model has allowed them to provide full, round the clock support to their customers in its branches without the need to staff them with tellers.
According to Gene Pranger, the company has partnered with NCR to expand its reach globally and will be looking at Africa in the next several years. Unfortunately, at present, although video banking may work in areas covered by fibre optic connections, remote African areas will still be unable to use it because video calling use up a lot of bandwidth. While satellite connection vendors are easily able to provide internet connection in rural areas, they will not be able to provide the speed needed for good quality video output. So the challenge remains, and it highlights the fact that someone in Africa has to invest in improved infrastructure, before customer service can improve and financial inclusion can become a reality.
‘With video banking, African banks can offer services in more locations than they ever could with conventional banking’
www.technologybanker.com | 7
FEATURE
The Profitable Reality of Rural Mobile Networks Since 2002, Altobridge has been bucking trends dispelling myths and overturning widely held beliefs within the mobile operator and investor communities, by proving that mobile network expansion into rural communities is not the commercially ruinous distraction that it was once thought to be By Mike Fitzgerald, Chief Executive, Altobridge
Mike Fitzgerald, Chief Executive, Altobridge
8 | Technology Banker January 2013
W
e urban dwellers take for granted the ubiquity of mobile coverage and our ready access to mobile networks. However, a recent study by industry organisation, the GSMA, revealed that only 45% of the world’s population is connected to a mobile network, with Africa having the lowest penetration at 33%, forecast to rise to only 40% by 2017. The study, not surprisingly, found that future mobile subscriber growth will be driven by demand from unconnected, rural communities. However, there are deep-rooted beliefs that the business case for delivering mobile connectivity to rural communities simply doesn’t stack up. But it’s time to think again. Connecting unconnected rural Africa should be embraced and not shirked from because there is now widespread evidence that, given the chance, rural communities actually deliver highly attractive returns on capital investment.
A Rural Solution To A Rural Problem Mind-set has been the single biggest barrier to rural network expansion, not just in Africa but globally. Too many rural expansion initiatives have failed commercially, simply because standard, high-Capex, high-Opex urban network solutions have been deployed to provide rural coverage. Despite the healthy revenues generated by grateful villagers, transposing power-hungry, capital-high urban telecoms infrastructure cannot deliver the ROI levels which network operators and financiers both demand. There is a way however. The answer lies in tackling a rural problem with a rural solution ie. a specifically designed, low-Capex, low-Opex, towerless, solar-powered base station, supporting up to 1,500 new subscribers with a coverage radius of up to 10 Km.
Village in Niger benefiting from Altobridge low cost mobile connection connectivity to a swathe of new rural communities in their respective countries. A further two African operators will do so in Q1 2013. The latter reported that some of its newly connected villages were carrying more than 250,000 minutes of voice traffic each month, and more than 15,000 SMS messages, thereby smashing another widely held myth, that there is little or no consumer demand for mobile services in rural communities. We have repeatedly seen this phenomenon in rural deployments throughout Africa and Asia, where subscriber uptake is instant, handset availability and affordability is never an issue and USD$ 4.00 to USD$ 5.00 monthly revenues per subscriber are the norm rather than the exception. It is also worth noting that these revenues are currently driven by voice and SMS traffic alone but with the arrival of cost-effective 3G-oversatellite mobile broadband, and with 3G handset prices falling, rural community revenues are set to climb even further.
Through 10 years of in-house R&D, focusing exclusively on overcoming the technical and commercial barriers to rural mobile connectivity, Altobridge has developed its lite-site™ solution, to deliver a low-cost and commercially viable means for mobile operators to extend their coverage footprint, beyond their urban strongholds.
This apparent contradiction, where relatively low-income, rural communities, spend a seemingly high percentage of their disposal incomes on mobile telephony can be explained and much research has been undertaken in this area. Thriving, literate and tech-savvy communities exist on the edge of every urban network and each one of these communities has its own micro-economy. In market
Pent-up Demand
towns and villages, where trade was previously done in person, more and more is done by phone and trade through mobile takes-off and thrives.
In 2012, African operators, Orange™ Niger and Tigo Ghana deployed this solution and brought first-time mobile
www.technologybanker.com | 9
Year 1
Year 2
Sites (EoY)
200
500
CAPEX per Site
$49K
$49K
Subscribers per Site
911
911
Monthly Revenue per Subscriber
$4.90
$4.95
Gross Revenue
$2.7 M
$27.0 M
EBITDA
$1.9 M
$22.5 M
75%
87%
-
88%
EBITDA % IRR (10 Years) Source: Altobridge
A 2009 study by The World Resource Institute discovered
First-in Wins All
that as developing world incomes rise, household spending on mobile telephony grows faster than spending on energy, water or indeed anything else, while a recent Base of the Pyramid study, by iHub and infoDev in Kenya, revealed that 1 in 5 of the respondents interviewed, had foregone some usual expenditure in order to reload their phone with credit. Among those who forgo a usual expense, it was established that on average, they forgo Ksh72 (USD $0.84) in order to reload and use their mobile phone.
Long-term mobile subscriber growth in Africa will come; in fact, it can only come from unconnected rural communities. The operators who move first to address this market segment will gain all, simply because one key dynamic of rural network expansion is that 1,000 subscriber-sized communities, can only commercially sustain one mobile operator. As such, the operator who arrives first secures all available subscribers, including the highly prized heavy users which exist in every community, be that urban or rural.
Based on our experiences, the studies above and many more besides, there is little doubt that the demand-side of the rural connectivity equation is very strong. The task now is to convince the wider African mobile operators and financiers, that there is a commercially robust solution available to tap-in to and to supply this huge market potential for profitable and incremental subscriber growth.
In addition, the ‘first-in-wins’ operator also builds-up a stronghold and loyalty within that community which deters further competitor entry and in so doing, it delivers a totally unique phenomenon for mobile operators - zero subscriber churn.
The Altobridge lite-site™ is one such proven solution, the business case for which is outlined below and is based upon actual lite-site™ deployments, in emerging markets and developing nations, to date. The evidence shows that a sub-USD $50,000 capital cost per deployment, including opex-free solar power and site-build, generates average monthly operator revenues of USD $4,500 per village and thereby a Return on Investment within 13 months.
10 | Technology Banker January 2013
‘Mind-set has been the single biggest barrier to rural network expansion, not just in Africa but globally’
TELECOMMUNICATION NEWS
Customers Get Free Airtime for Using M-Pesa Mobile Payment Service
NCC to Evaluate Network Providers’ Services
Tanzania: Vodacom is set to reward customers with free airtime when they use the provider’s M-Pesa mobile payment service.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) reiterated its on-going efforts to enhance the services of the network providers in Nigeria.
According to the Managing Director of Vodacom Tanzania, Rene Meza, the bonus will be given to the first M-Pesa mobile payment service transaction of the day on a per service basis. The bonus airtime can be used for SMS, internet including on-net voice calls.
According to the Director of Public Affairs at NCC, Tony Ojobo, the commission is organising a check dubbed as ‘Drive Test’, to be given to various network providers in the country to assess their services.
A customer will be eligible to one bonus airtime worth Tsh1,000 even if he completed three transactions that day. While customers, who use different services will be given the bonus airtime for each service they use.
Orange Opens Its Operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo Orange, a French telecommunications operator, has started its operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The assessment includes testing and analysing the signals of v networks in different locations through a vehicle driven across the country. This is expected to uncover the quality of service that individual the network provider delivers.
Glo Bolt Customers Get Free Internet Data After SIM Activation
Nigeria: Globacom’s newest Glo Bolt internet modem is bundled with freebies including a Glo SIM card, Free 500 MB worth of data given after SIM card activation, as well as 6-month free data.
The customers of Orange DRC complete the 183 million total numbers of global customers of the operator in 33 different countries.
The offer is available to both new and existing Glo network subscribers.
According to Orange officials, the first 3G+ network in the country has already been deployed in major cities. The 3G+ network is already operational Kinshasa and soon will be available in Lubumbashi and Matadi. The company plans to provide coverage to customers in Goma, MbujiMayi and Bukavu by the early part of 2013.
Globacom is also giving out a 30% bonus and a 200MB monthly free data for 6 months free when customers subscribe to any of its pocket plans like Always Macro, Always Min, Always Max, Silver, Gold and Platinum plans. Free data will be given after customers activate a monthly plan worth N1,000 or higher.
12 | Technology Banker January 2013
VIEW FROM THE TOP
What Do Experts Expect for 2013? The New Year is always a time of hope and expectations. It will not be the same without predictions and resolutions. So, to keep up with tradition, Technology Banker asked our interviewees this month to tell us what they expect in the coming year The convergence of network and application performance data will be a new way of thinking for IT and ATM operations. The complexities associated with managing multi-tiered application environments, third party service levels, and the growing mishmash of virtual, online, mobile and other self-service application types translate into a whole new set of support requirements and performance management issues that can often involve multiple infrastructure components. Although organisations will still require individual infrastructure monitoring capabilities to underpin information and communications technology delivery, most business value will be derived out of knowing, in real time, how services and business processes are being delivered. Both large and small organizations will become increasingly focused on meeting customer service expectations, guaranteeing end-to-end business process delivery and modernizing their IT infrastructure. This shift in business focus will drive IT and ATM Operations teams seek end-to-end visibility across multiple IT domains and faster problem resolution through the convergence of “actionable� network and application performance data. - Stacy Gorkoff - VP of Strategic Market, INETCO Systems Limited
The biggest trend in retail backing will be the retooling of the branch network. Efficiency is the driving force. So, banks will be leveraging any form of technology that will drive expenses out of the branch network. The second trend will be as FIs design their future retail delivery system they will develop smaller footprint branches that rely heavily on technology. This could be video banking but will also utilize TCDs and incorporate selfservice technology solutions. - Gene Pranger - Founder & CEO of uGenius
I expect better security and regulation. There are too many transactions happening in a loosely secured environment at the moment, especially transactions that mobile operators are enabling. As the value of these transaction increases, so the fraudsters will become more interested. When this happens any flaws in the security will be exposed, people will lose money and the regulators will regulate. Systems will then have to be updated to meet new regulations. - Barry Coetzee - CEO of iVeri Payment Technology
www.technologybanker.com | 13
FEATURE
How much does poor customer service cost you? You know that poor customer service can lose you customers, but do you know how much in monetary terms? Although it is an accepted fact that poor customer service drives customers away, it is still rife in many big organisations, particularly in developing countries By Hope Varnes
O
ne bank customer in Africa lamented: ‘Even with professionals, they tell clients what to do rather than offer clients option what can be done, traffic police order you off the road like you are some criminal, you get into a shop you have to beg people to help you like they are doing you a favour, you call the bank helpline you hold on for 20 minutes to be given another number to call then another, nobody bothers to call you back’.
14 | Technology Banker January 2013
But, although poor customer service is bad in the private sector, it seems worse in the public sector as one customer recounted: ‘I once went to a government office and the lady I wanted to see was on the phone and I could tell she was telling her maid things to do. After she hung up I thought great now she will serve me, alas, she proceeded to phone her husband and both calls lasted like 5 minutes with me just sitting and she finally asked “ndinga kubatsirei nei” ‘.
It seems that bigger companies with more staff and money to invest are the ones getting it wrong. According to a customer from University of Kawala, ‘the people who actually give good customer service in Africa are informal traders, the guys at the traffic lights with the airtime cards and newspapers are quite friendly as are the numerous street vendors. However when it comes to the formal sector, be it government or private, the concept of customer service is alien to them’. Of course, street vendors know the value of their customers. If they are unkind or rude, they know that they will not have a sale that day and would therefore lose a day’s worth of profit. And top executives of big companies know this too. Yet, customers are still left unhappy while the company bleeds money. Just imagine this, if your bank is spending £10 million each year on advertising, and gain 67,000 customers; each customer costs you nearly £150 to acquire. But that is cheap if each customer will help your bank earn £100 per second in profit. And if there are 31,536,000 seconds in a year, each customer is bringing in £3,153,600,000. And if one customer stays with you for at least 10 years, that customer is worth £31,536,000,000 to your business. So, imagine if 0.5% of these 67,000 customers experienced bad service, and let’s say 10% decides to move to your competitor because 90% could not be bothered to change banks, you could lose over £1 billion of potential profit. And the reason for that could be as simple as a bad mannered staff or 20 minutes wait before their phone call is answered. Of course, the calculation presented is very basic. You could lose less or more. For more concrete evidence, in a 2010 customer service study conducted jointly by Genesys Lab, Ovum and Greenfield Online in the UK, 73% of customers who changed providers sited poor customer service as the reason for the defection. The same study also revealed that the biggest loser was the financial service industry, which lost £2.5 billion that year. But data was only looking at short term. As illustrated above, the worth of a customer doesn’t just span a year, but throughout the life of his needs. A 35 year old professional does not need to bank for just one year. That person may live up to his 90s, and therefore has 55 years’ of banking needs.
Complex Customers Customer service is a complex issue, mainly because customers have complex needs. And as technology advances, customers are also developing high
expectations. Additionally, financial products and services are complex, and have to be tailored to customers’ needs. Therefore, providing a standard level of service is not a simple matter, but not impossible. Customer service is not about offering a perfect solution, 100% up time or false sunny smiles. When it comes to customer service, the goal is to offer consistent good service experience to customers, and very little reason to contact you whilst still being accessible if customers need to contact you. Access to human care is very important in resolving customer issues. Automated service has made customers’ life easier. It reduced the time waste waiting in queues and made most financial services available anytime and anywhere. But customers also see this as the cause of poor customer service. Most customers interviewed during the survey conducted by Genesys sited that repeating themselves, talking to representatives who don’t understand their history and value, waiting too long to be served, being trapped in automated self-service and unable to transfer from one communication channel to another, are the worse cause of their dissatisfaction. As one customer said, ‘I was planning to buy, and wanted more information on the product, but no one seemed to be able to help me. So in the end I just gave up’. And as staff members are getting further from the customers, this situation becoming more familiar, especially in bigger institution. When asked what could have made the service better, most of those surveyed considered contact with someone who knew their history as the top communication channel that would satisfy them. Personalisation and rapid response to complaints are very effective at placating disgruntled customers. And this can easily be done by ensuring that customer data is integrated in one system, which recognises the customer’s value and history.
“I was planning to buy, and wanted more information on the product, but no one seemed to be able to help me. So in the end I just gave up.” Customer as interviewed by Genesys
www.technologybanker.com | 15
BANKING NEWS
ABSA to Open Islamic Banking in Ghana
Pan-African Banking Is the Future of Africa, Says Ecobank
Absa, which will soon assume responsibility over Barclays Africa, has revealed it plans to open Islamic banking in Ghana and other in other countries in Africa.
Ecobank has launched an new advertising as part of its intense effort in promoting its new brand positioning that will enable cross-border trade and investment.
On 6 December 2012, Absa clinched a £1.3 billion agreement with Barclays, which sees the South African banking group taking Barclays bank’s operations in Africa, including Ghana where it will take over 100% of the bank’s operation.
The ad promotes Ecobank as a Pan-African bank competent in initiating constructive changes for individual consumers as well as for various organisations across the vibrant African continent.
In a press interview with Ghana Business News, Arrie Rautenbach, Head of Retail Markets for ABSA, stated Islamic banking has always been a part of ABSA’s strategic plan. He added that the bank is working with their stakeholders at Barclays to help it launch Islamic banking in Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda.
According to the Group Chief Executive Officer of Ecobank, Arnold Ekpe, Ecobank is distinctively set to provide convenience in banking to the African people. He added that it is capable to enable cross-border trade and investment through its presence across 33 different African countries.
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has already signalled its readiness to accept Islamic banking in the country, but it has not yet received an application.
The bank advocates cultural diversity to adopt the best practices seen internationally as well as using the latest technology to create a top of the class Pan-African institution.
FNB Hit by Systems Breach at PayGate
Ecobank to expand in East Africa
The First National Bank (FNB) is the latest victim of PayGate’s systems breach.
The Ecobank’s expansion plans will best benefit East Africa as the bank takes advantage of the developing and continuously growing cross-border trading in the region.
The bank has so far contained all known affected FNB accounts after receiving an alert from the Payments Association of South Africa (PASA) concerning compromised data at PayGate. FNB issued a statement assuring its customers that no customer incurred any losses due to the breach as it has been replacing the cards of customers whose account details compromised.
16 | Technology Banker January 2013
According to the Chief Executive Officer Designate of Ecobank, Thierry Tanoh, Ecobank’s branch in the East African region is still small highlighting its disadvantage against local rivals. However, the bank is confident that it can grow its network to bring in more customers to its platform. He conceded that the current ban on foreign banks’ entry into Ethiopia will slow the bank’s progress into Central and East Africa. Mr Tanoh also shared Ecobank’s vision to be known as a reliable bank for African consumers and businesses.
EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW
Interview with Barry Coatzee: ‘Getting rid of cash is probably as feasible as the paperless office’ Since 1998 iVeri has been in the forefront of electronic payment technology in Africa. It is the longest is PCI DSS Level One certified entity in Sub-Saharan Africa, having received its third certification in a row. Recently, the company launched mPress, a new payment product specially designed for small businesses. Yet, despite being one of the leaders in payment technology in Africa, iVeri’s Chief Executive and Founder, Barry Coetzee, believes that cash will still be king. Technology Banker catches up with him to find out more about iVeri and the role it plays in the banking industry you tell us a little about iVeri and its products Q Can and services?
A
iVeri creates products that are used by banks. There are two products, the Payment Gateway that facilitates multi-channel acceptance of international and other cards at merchants, and, MicroBank which is a mobile bank branch. iVeri also has some services which we offer to our bank customers, one of which is a PCI-DSS Level One certified data centre.
Q Who are your customers? majority of our customers are large banks A The although we do have one customer that is a Third Party Processor.
Q Which countries do you operate? currently has customers in South Africa, A iVeri Namibia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia and Equatorial Guinea.
Q Can you tell us more about your banking product? recently launched mPress product addresses A Our the payment acceptance needs of small businesses. The product combines a smartphone app with an internationally certified card reader. The audience for this product are single lane businesses (small retailers, bed and breakfasts), mobile businesses (taxis, house-to-house sales), etc.
The difference that mPress brings to these merchants is the ability to securely (Chip and PIN) accept international cards (Visa and MasterCard) at a price that is significantly lower than with a standard
www.technologybanker.com | 17
desktop PoS terminal. Additionally, because the transaction is processed in an App, we provide the merchant with additional services (stock capture, item pricing, etc) that were previously not available with traditional POS terminals. This technology also uses a new end-to-end encryption service. can your product help banks increase customer Q How acquisition and improve customer service?
A
In Africa, the majority of retailers are small. Previously they have been excluded from this market. mPress now brings this entire sector as potential customers.
infrastructure do banks need to run your Q What product?
A
The banks need to have access to a merchant acquiring system and they need to have the necessary licenses from Visa and MasterCard. We plug into this infrastructure.
Q How prevalent is Payment Fraud in Africa? question as the issue is different from A Difficult country to country. Payment rules and regulations
are defined by the governments of each country and vary wildly. There are countries that mandate Chip and PIN (like Nigeria and Rwanda) and consequently have lower fraud to countries that have very little regulation where the fraud is a little higher.
However, African countries are generally very conservative and have extremely strict rules that keep the fraud levels down. This sometimes has a negative effect which can be seen when one sees how few countries have eCommerce capabilities and electronic transaction laws.
Q
During the transaction process, who is responsible for the security of the transaction? Is it the merchant? The bank? or iVeri?
A
The bank is responsible. iVeri and the Merchant have agreements with the bank which governs the usage and the procedures required, but the Bank is ultimately responsible for the integrity of the entire process.
seems that many African countries are promoting Q Ita ‘cashless society’, what does it mean and is it really possible?
A
Getting rid of cash is probably as feasible as the paperless office. The concept has been around for a long time and there may even be a reduction of paper use in the office, however, more paper is being used on the planet today than ever.
18 | Technology Banker January 2013
Governments are very keen to move away from cash to electronic payments as there are many advantages to them to achieve this. In Africa this is not going to happen easily and anytime soon as electronic transactions require comprehensive and cheap infrastructure to be in place. No African country is anywhere near this, although Kenya is probably the closest.
are a lot of micro-businesses in Africa that Q There deal with low-value sales, is accepting card or
mobile payment feasible for these businesses? If not, are there any solutions available for them apart from cash payment?
A
Cash will still rule in low value transactions for a long time. It is the most efficient way to performing these transactions.
Q What is in store for iVeri in 2013? are very excited about 2013. Besides taking A We mPress to the market, we are also launching some
new security services in the New Year. If all goes well, we will also be expanding to a few more customers.
‘Getting rid of cash is probably as feasible as the paperless office. The concept has been around for a long time and there may even be a reduction of paper use in the office, however, more paper is being used on the planet today than ever.’
NEW PRODUCT RELEASE
Insight 5.2: Application Performance Monitoring Solution from INETCO Systems In November 2012, INETCO Systems launched it INETCO Insight 5.2. Technology Banker speaks with Stacy Gorkoff - VP of Strategic Market, INETCO Systems Ltd to find out about Insight 5.2, an application performance management solution (APM). The market is teeming with IT solutions to improve customer service experience. However, the everchanging demands make customer service improvement a continuous process that does not end with the deployment of an IT solution. Constant monitoring of application is important to ensure that it delivers the outcomes it was intended for and to measure its tangible contribution to the business in general. This is where application performance management (APM) comes in. APM gives business meaning to IT metrics. It assesses IT solutions installed to identify, analyse, and give details on application performance problems to guarantee that it meets or surpasses the business and end-users’ expectations.
Q A
Can you give us a little about INETCO Systems Ltd?
Q
What is the reason behind the development of INETCO Insight 5.2?
A
Today’s Retail Bank Delivery Channels are complex environments consisting of many applications with many hardware and infrastructure dependencies. They continue to morph and expand as banks try to stay ahead of their competition and strengthen their brand promise, better position themselves for crosssell/up-sell opportunities, and meet the needs of the customer - wherever they are.
Stacy Gorkoff - INETCO VP of Strategic Marketing
20 | Technology Banker January 2013
INETCO Systems Limited provides transaction-based application performance monitoring solutions to IT and ATM Operations teams that are looking for a fast, non-invasive way to identify application and infrastructure bottlenecks and ensure optimal service and business process delivery within their production environments. INETCO’s solutions are currently deployed in over 50 different countries. Happy INETCO Insight partners and customers include a variety of global companies spanning banking, ATM, retail, healthcare, travel, telecommunications and payment processing markets.
As a result, many delivery channel “systems” include a number of critical customer facing devices and applications, including ATM terminals, POS terminals, self-service kiosks, telephone banking, call center applications, mobile banking applications, teller PC’s, Internet banking applications, CRM systems, and corporate sales desktops. Most of these customer facing applications must connect to the core banking platform - which is often a legacy platform that does not mesh well with modern applications.
A
• End-to-end service health monitoring - INETCO Insight provides visibility into how each “hop” on every individual end-to-end transaction path is performing. This includes the various points of transaction initiation, the payment operations or switch, the core legacy banking platform, the connections to third party service providers, and the back end gateways and EFT service connections
All these channel system applications and the various EFT and value added services running through them, can be thought of as critical monitoring targets. INETCO Insight 5.2 was launched to help IT and ATM operations team to:
• Faster problem isolation - INETCO Insight provides transaction correlation and predictive analytics for all business activities. The software automatically correlates and displays the performance and availability of systems across the business, application and infrastructure domains
• Ensure modern, customer-centric applications are working seamlessly with legacy system platforms
• A network-based deployment model that does not require the use of intrusive agents or add extra traffic load
• Keep track of how various services are performing across multiple channels - in real-time • Go from utilizing dozens of tools to monitor globally distributed, disparate systems to one main collaborative one
Q A
• Dashboard object view component to provide IT and ATM Operations teams with the framework needed to access actionable transaction statistics, such as how many times a particular user has experienced a transaction decline • An application programming interface (API) that provides OEM integration partners with a way to stream transaction-based data captured by INETCO Insight to any management system console, leveraging flexible, network-based INETCO Insight collectors that can run in virtual, Cloud and SaaS environments • A field programmable interface that enables the creation of customised statistics specific to customer’s application environments
Q
• Better collaboration - It provides a one-stop window to view traffic for each service across all customer delivery channels, within the retail banking environment
What are the core features of INETCO Insight 5.2? INETCO Insight captures every network transaction in real-time, correlates all application, infrastructure and response timing data and isolates underperforming application and network components - without the use of agents, extra traffic loads or code changes. INETCO Insight 5.2 builds on the core INETCO Insight 5 capabilities with the addition of an analytics service that tracks transaction usage and performance characteristics for individual objects (e.g. users, devices, hosts) and reports this data through both the user interface and an API. Included in this release are:
What are the benefits that INETCO Insight has delivered to customers?
Some of the key benefits that INETCO Insight has delivered to banking and payment processing customers include:
Q
Can INETCO Insight 5.2 help improve customer service? How?
A
Transaction-based application performance monitoring helps improve the end customer experience by helping IT and ATM Operations teams answer the question, “How are my services performing in the eyes of my end customer?”
Banks and payment processors are putting a very strong focus on end customer experience. Service degradations or latencies mean loss of customers, but there are more customer facing applications to manage than ever. This is why banks are demanding more information on channel traffic and service traffic.
INETCO Insight extends visibility beyond the point where a customer’s transaction is initiated, such as the ATM or POS, and improves the end-customer experience by providing the real-time transaction intelligence IT and ATM Operations teams need to deliver: • Consistent service quality across all your expanding customer-facing channels • Timely service delivery and fast response times for all critical applications • Improved overall uptime and network availability
www.technologybanker.com | 21
TECHNOLOGY PAGE
Do you know your Bits from your Bytes? Warning! This article is not for the savvy computer users, although you are welcome to read it for entertainment By Lin-ay De Ville
22 | Technology Banker January 2013
A
s internet usage increases in Africa, it is helpful to know how much data you are likely to need in a month, so you can find the correct broadband plan that is suitable for your needs. Mb and MB are such common terminologies in IT, but you can bet your socks off that not many ordinary internet users know what they mean in relation to their internet consumption. However, I am pretty sure that you know that Mb stands for Mega Bit and MB stands for Mega Byte. So, what is the difference between Bits and Bytes? I will not bore you with information such as ‘a bit is a contraction of the words binary digit’ and that it is the smallest element of data in a computer, and that 8 bits is equal to 1 byte. If you don’t know it, you will glaze over it and if you know what it is, you don’t need to read this. What is practical to know is that a ‘bit’ is used to calculate download speed while monthly internet plan caps are calculated in Bytes, such as 500MB, 2GB or 3GB data bundles. When downloading a file, at the bottom of the screen you will see something like 1.5 Mbps, which means that the file is downloading at a speed of 1.5 Mega bit per second. This doesn’t have any bearing to size of the file, but with your internet connection. If you are using a DSL or Cable modem, a 1MB file will take 3 to 30 seconds, if you are on high speed fibre optic connection, it will take about ¼ to 4 seconds, while if you are using satellite, it will take a few minutes. The speed of the file upload or download will not eat into your internet data plan, but the size of the files will. It is easy to tell the difference between Bits and Bytes. Bits are always expressed in lower case (e.g. Mbps), while Bytes are in upper case (e.g. MB). Just remember that Byte is bigger, so it is in upper case, and Bit is smaller, thus it is lower case.
YouTube - The data you will consume with YouTube depends on your display resolution. For example, watching a video at 240p resolution for 5 minutes will eat up 8.33 MB of data, while at 360p, the same length of time will use up 13.33MB, 720p will use up 37.5MB and 1080p will use up 62MB, which means that a 40 minute video will eat up 496 MB of data. However, don’t think that because you are not using YouTube, you are not going to eat into your download cap. Remember, video is embedded in everything, including Facebook, online newspapers, blogs and review sites. So be aware of the data usage everytime you stream a video. Facebook on the other hand uses 1MB of data per minute. It doesn’t sound a lot, but if you use Facebook 5 hours a month, then you’ll easily consume 300MB of data. Five hours on Facebook seem quite a lot, but you’ll be surprised to know that an average Facebook user spends 7 hours on the site monthly. Out of the three services, Skype uses the least data. For a standard call without video, you are only using approximately 360KB per minute. For video calling, you are looking on average about 10MB per 5 minutes So, there you are. Enjoy the freedom that the internet offers, but remember it will come at a cost.
‘Bit’ is used to calculate download speed while monthly internet plan caps are calculated in Bytes, such as 500MB, 2GB or 3GB data bundles.’
How much data do you use? Do you enjoy using Facebook, YouTube or Skype? Then it’s worth knowing how much data these online services involved.
www.technologybanker.com | 23
Technology Banking & Finance Africa One Voice What works best today? What gives you the edge? How are your competitors exploiting new technology? And how can you find out all that’s going on in the world of banking and finance technology in Africa? Make decision making simple. Acquire knowledge.
Get an in-depth knowledge about African Banking and Technology sector. Check out updates on Technology for banking. Find out the best way to develop relationships with local business in Africa. Learn about new laws, regulations, standards and technical requirements that affect your business in Africa.
Read Technology Banker...The technology resource for banks and finance in Africa To receive further copies or to advertise call +44(0) 1442 345 379 or e-mail jenny@technologybanker.com
VENDOR’S PAGE
Amazon Web Services: Cloud Computing Pioneer Cloud computing is currently the technology craze. ‘In the cloud’ is now a common phrase among techies and even those who probably don’t know what it means. The big question is, should the financial industry wholeheartedly embrace cloud computing? Or should it continue to accept it with great reservation? Technology Banker speaks to Glen Robinson, Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services, the very first ever company that launched cloud computing service in 2002 • Pay for what you use. There is no upfront fee, no contract or commitment with cloud computing. Organisations only pay for what they actually consume and have the flexibility to choose the pricing model that best meets their business requirement. • Elastic Capacity. Organisations can scale both up and down, and not sit on unneeded, excess compute capacity with the cloud. Also, the cloud allows applications and businesses to seamlessly grow as quickly as is needed. When the organisation no longer needs that capacity, they can shed it just as quickly. • Fast Time to Market. Banks and finance institutions can move much more quickly with whatever projects they have when using the cloud. They can spin up large amounts of server capacity in minutes instead of waiting for days or weeks for capacity to be assigned to them. • Focus on Your Core Competence. By using cloud computing financial organisations can take scarce engineering resources and instead of applying them to running infrastructure, which is not part of their core mission as a company, they can spend time on projects that add value to their customer offerings or areas that differentiate their business.
Glen Robinson, Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services
Q
What are the benefits that cloud computing delivers to the banking & finance industry?
A
The benefits that cloud computing brings to the banking and finance industry can be summarised in five characteristics: No capital expenditure, pay for what you use, elastic capacity, fast time to market and the ability to focus on your core competence. • No Capital Expenditure. This means that banks do not have to spend capital expenses on servers or data centres. They get to turn capital expense to variable expense, which is a huge advantage for financial institutions that simply do not want to tie capital to infrastructure.
is AWS, and how does it serve the financial Q What industry?
A
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a technology company that provides a highly reliable, secure, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud to companies of all sizes, all over the world. AWS launched in 2006 and since we first began we have been surprised by the rapid growth we have seen. A few data points we can share regarding the growth of the services are: every day AWS adds the equivalent server capacity to power Amazon.com when it was a $5 billion USD business in the
www.technologybanker.com | 25
Amazon Web Services Overview
year 2003 and; the Amazon Simple Storage Services (Amazon S3) now stores more than 1.3 trillion objects and peaks at over 850,000 requests per second. AWS is now used by hundreds of thousands of customers in over 190 countries around the world including many customers in the banking and finance sectors.
Organisations in the banking and finance sectors are using AWS for many applications from marketing and customer support through to core applications that help ensure the financial health of their business. These range from some of the world’s largest banks through to fast growing start-ups in the financial sector. One bank using AWS is Spanish retail bank, Bankinter.
Bankinter is the sixth largest bank in Spain and has adopted the cloud to give them a competitive advantage. It uses HPC on AWS to run credit risk simulations to evaluate the financial health of their clients. By incorporating AWS into their IT environment, Bankinter has managed to take their average time for running simulations from 23 hours to 20 minutes. Bankinter also estimates that it has saved one hundred times the amount they would have had to invest in hardware alone by using AWS.
In Africa there are also many banking and financial institutions that are using AWS. One organisation
26 | Technology Banker January 2013
working with African banks on AWS is financial sector start-up Entersekt. Entersekt is a technology company based in South Africa that is working with many of Africa’s largest banks to help them take advantage of the cloud. Entersekt is working with banking institutions like Nedbank and Capitec Bank to supply them with highly secure mobile applications that take advantage of AWS. Entersekt’s mobile applications help improve the security of the retail banking experience and allow users to authenticate individual transactions, such as online card purchases, online wire transfers and money withdrawals at an ATM, by simply choosing to “Accept” the transaction when prompted on their mobile phones. How AWS helps this solution is with the ability to scale and ease of deployment.
For banks, having millions of phones connecting into their infrastructure can be a total nightmare. This problem is solved by Entersekt and the Cloud. With the Entersekt system, data is sent fully encrypted from the bank and passed through AWS. AWS has the scale to be able to handle massive amounts of mobile phones connecting to its infrastructure which helps the bank to cope with vast numbers of users connecting to their system all at once. With an extremely small and lightweight installation at the bank to handle the encryption efforts, Entersekt is able to support vast amounts of mobile users as all the heavy lifting is ultimately
AWS Screen Shot
AWS Screen Shot
done in the Cloud.
During high transaction periods, such as the end of the month, when people are being paid, or the end of the year, around the holiday and shopping seasons, the system is able to scale up to cope with the vast amount of banking transactions taking place and in the quieter periods the infrastructure is able to scale back down again. This means that financial institutions only pay for the technology they need, when they need it, and don’t over provision hardware to cope with seasonal peaks. By using this cloud based system banks have been able to give their customers a more secure and better retail banking experience all while reducing online phishing fraud to an absolute 0%.
Q A
How does AWS work?
AWS gives businesses of any size access to storage, compute, database and many other technologies on a pay as you go basis, over an internet connection, from anywhere in the world. Anyone with some basic knowledge of IT, an idea and a credit card can go to aws.amazon.com and get access to near infinite amounts of compute and storage on demand and they only pay for what they use. With AWS customers choose to run their technology infrastructure in one of the nine AWS Regions around the world. An AWS Region is geographically where AWS’ computing infrastructure is located. AWS Regions house services like Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon RDS and over 25 of our other services. Regions are also separated into what we call Availability Zones. Availability Zones (AZs) are distinct locations that are engineered to be insulated from failures in other AZs and provide inexpensive, low latency network connectivity to other AZs in the same Region. For example AZs are each on different Tier 1 networks, different electricity grids, different flood plains and different seismic zones etc. AZs are made up of one, and sometimes more, data centres. What this means is that if one AZ were to fall off the face of the earth, all other AZs in the same Region would still operate seamlessly. This gives customers the opportunity
to architect their applications across multiple AZs in the same region to build highly available and resilient applications and infrastructures. To get started with the services we give customers the option to get up and running without paying a single penny, for a year, with something called the AWS Free Tier. The AWS Free Tier gives new AWS customers enough compute power to run an Amazon EC2 Micro instance (of Linux or Windows) free for an entire year. As part of the Free Tier customers also have free access to other Amazon Web Services resources such as database and storage resources. More detail can be found on the Free Tier page by going to: http://aws.amazon.com/ free
Aside from the Free Tier AWS has a range of other pricing options for customers for all of the services. We have found customers care about cost and we are continuing to work to lower our costs and pass the savings to our customers. We’ve reduced prices 24 times over the past 6 years with little competitive pressure to do so. This is a very different business than traditional IT and we think we’re quite good at running high volume - low margin businesses.
Aside from using the services directly, it’s important to note that customers can engage with AWS on multiple levels. As above, customers can get started using AWS without ever having to talk to us. They simply go to the website, sign up for AWS and can start using the services right away. AWS offers tutorials, demos, an architecture site and whitepapers that provide customers with best practices and guidelines for how to take advantage of the AWS platform, and we’ve found many of our customers choose to leverage AWS this way.
We also have customers who want to engage deeper with us and we have teams based around the world dedicated to supporting financial sector customers. When we sit down with customers we first walk them through the technology and the services we offer, followed by a deep dive into security. We’ll then talk with them about their technology architecture and put together a proof of concept framework that they can leverage to get
www.technologybanker.com | 27
started. Another way our customers choose to work with AWS is through our partners.
Early on, at AWS, we determined that the partner ecosystem was critical to the success of our customers and to our business. A customer should be able to run any piece of software on Linux or Windows for example and also run that software, and run it well, on the AWS environment. AWS Partners are software and internet services companies that build solutions that run on, or are complementary to, AWS.
AWS has a rapidly growing partner ecosystem and within that ecosystem we’re seeing established companies find new channels to market and bringing their products to the masses with the cloud. Our partners are made up of two primary partner types: Technology Partners and Consulting Partners. Our technology partners range from large global ISVs like SAP, Oracle and Microsoft through to local partners such as Entersekt in South Africa. Our consulting partners also range from large, global Systems Integrators such as CapGemini and WiPro to local, financial sector specific consultancies such as Smart421 in the UK.
Q
How does AWS address security and compliance issues for the banking and finance industry?
A
For AWS, security is always the top priority. Many organisations don’t have the luxury of dedicating the same levels of resources to security that Amazon Web Services has been doing over the years.
AWS maintains security at the physical datacenter by providing badge-controlled access, guard stations, monitored security cameras, alarms, separate cages, and strictly audited procedures and processes. Amazon Web Services’ datacenter security uses the same practices employed in private data center facilities today. It has the added physical security advantage that customers have no need to access to the servers and networking gear inside. Because of this, access to the datacenter is even more strictly controlled than traditional rented facilities. In regards to network security in the AWS cloud, we maintain packet-level isolation of network traffic and support industry-standard encryption. Because Amazon Web Services’ Virtual Private Cloud allows a customer to establish their own IP address space, customers can use the same tools and software infrastructure they’re already familiar with to monitor and control their cloud networks. AWS’ scale allows significantly more investment in security controls and countermeasures than almost any large company can afford. As well as physical security AWS has also completed certifications such as ISO 27001, FISMA, DIACAP Mac II, PCI DSS Level 1. AWS has, in the past, successfully completed multiple SAS70 Type II audits, and now publishes a Service Organization Controls 1 (SOC 1), Type 2 report as well as a Service Organization Controls 2 (SOC 2) report. We also continue to
28 | Technology Banker January 2013
pursue certifications that are important to larger customers and customers in the government and financial sector.
An example of how AWS is working with financial sector customers to supply them with secure, cloud based resources is the work we have recently done with NASDAQ. In September 2012 AWS launched FinQloud with NASDAQ. This is a cloud solution designed to serve the needs of the regulated financial services industry.
FinQloud provides financial services customers with a secure, industry-only cloud that takes advantage of the AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to create a completely isolated network layer. This new technology provides a highly secure environment that helps financial institutions to meet compliance requirements when providing regulators with access to granular data around financial activities.
Q
What are the benefits that AWS contributes to the improvement of a banks’ customer service?
A
By choosing AWS financial institutions can take their scarce technology engineering resources and instead of applying them to running infrastructure, which is not part of their core business offering, they can spend time on projects that add value to their customer offerings or areas that differentiate their business.
Running infrastructure is rarely, if ever, differentiating for a financial institution - it’s not what makes or breaks their business. It’s a huge advantage if they can offload the running and maintenance of technology infrastructure to somebody reliable, scalable and cost-effective and focus their energy on building applications to better serve their customers.
An example of a large bank that is using the cloud to develop applications to improve their customer service is Unicredit. Unicredit is a pan European bank based in Italy. They have approximately 40 million customers and 9,500 branches in 22 countries. This makes Unicredit the largest international banking network in the Central and Eastern Europe.
Unicredit is using AWS for geospatial web and mobile applications. The result is the UniCredit Locator application which helps customers find the financial institute’s offices, branches, and ATMs. This is helping improve the customer experience for Unicredit as it is connecting customers to the bank while they are mobile. The usage of this application started in Italy and by end of 2011 was available to customers in 21 European countries.
SECURITY NEWS
Gameover Uses Cutwail Botnets to Send Malicious Emails The author of the notorious Zeus banking Trojan variant, Gameover is now using the spamming capability of Cutwail botnet to send malicious e-mails. Emails are disguised as coming from a number of US banks. The duplicitous e-mail notifies each recipient of the receipt of an encrypted or secured message from the bank that is attached to the email. The attachment is an executable file. Once the user clicks the attachment it installs a Gameover Zeus variant to the user’s machine. Another attack strategy sends e-mails to users informing them that they received a fax, scan or voicemail and that they can only access the information by downloading a free application attached to the e-mail. Top US banks that have been victimized by this Zeus variant were not named.
New Zeus Variant Trojan Infects Mobile Devices A new Zeus variant Trojan, Eurograbber is responsible for stealing about €36 million ($47 million dollars) from around 30,000 consumers and corporate accounts in European banks. According to Darrell Burkey, expert at Check Point Software Technologies, the Eurograbber demonstrates that criminals can still get around the authentication process in bank transactions. He also added that the attack is aimed at a specific type of authentication process. Versafe, the online identity-theft protection, first identified the attack in August, when it circumvented the common out-of band authentication process and compromised over 30,000 online bank accounts in Europe. It is suspected that Eurograbber originated from Italy, which then later moved towards Germany, Holland as well as in Spain.
New Malware Masquerades as Trend Micro Component Trend Micro has identified a new malware which is masquerading as one of its components to deceive users. The malware variant installs a Bitcoin Miner application to make money for the author of the Trojan. Cybercriminals use Bitcoins to make money while leaving its victim computers slow and unusable. The security solutions provider has detected it as TROJ_RIMECUD.AJL. Trend Micro advises users to be cautious when downloading and installing applications; especially if the link was from the internet.
Tumblr Suffered Worm Attack Using malware attacks, a group of internet trolls named GNAA has damaged thousands of pages on the blogging platform, Tumblr. The destruction on the blogging platform was carried out against bloggers, and came with a message that warns anyone who attempts to remove the message posted by the internet troll will have their Tumblr’s account deleted. According to Graham Cluley, a researcher from Sophos, the worm that the culprits used to attack the blogging platform, used its re-blogging feature. The logged-in user was forced to re-blog the trolls’ message after the user has landed on the infected page. Sophos detected a malicious JavaScript hidden in an iFrame that created a fake maintenance notification and directed the user to a third party website where the worm was attached.
www.technologybanker.com | 29
VOICE FROM AFRICA
Africa’s Technology Landscape from the Eyes of a Technology Expert Ghana’s local ISP, BusyInternet, has led the internet revolution in the country since 2001. Since its launch 12 ago, the company has enjoyed a number of recognitions including ISP of the year 2007-08, Ghana ICT Awards 2008 (Lifetime Achievement Award) and CIMG ISP of the year 2009 & 2010. Technology Banker talks to its managing director, Praveen Sadalage, to hear his views about the technology landscape in Africa.
Q What is the current technology landscape in Africa? on the industry, for example, lots could be A Depends done in the field of agriculture and farming and help improve productivity and improve Africa’s food situation, given that the continent is blessed with arable land and water resources. Construction and infrastructure could do better with latest technology. Meanwhile, the communications industry has adopted and deployed the latest technology available and the results are there to see. Mobile and Internet penetration has grown multi-fold.
Q How did technology change the life in Africa? visible change has been in the field of mobile A Most communication, where populations with low or no
teledensity/penetration have leap frogged into high teledensity with the advent of mobile technology and that has even further transformed and empowered Africans, their businesses and economies.
terms of innovation, is there anything that Africa Q Inneeds that is not yet available to the market?
A
A lot is happening and more needs to happen. The key is sustained effort and follow through to see the end result of a marketable/viable idea.
month we are covering customer service, what Q This do think is the overall level of customer service in Africa?
30 | Technology Banker January 2013
BusyInternet managing director, Praveen Sadalage
A
Like in any emerging economies, the process of adoption to new methodology, technology and business processes are always difficult and painful due to cultural and legacy issues.
African markets are now getting exposed to new products and new levels of service and can expect time bound actions from service providers, when it comes to customer service. As companies invest in better technology and human resources and take ownership to improve on delivery of quality services, the levels of customer service and satisfaction is definitely going to increase.
can banks use technology to deliver better Q How customer service?
A
Banks could be using the ubiquitous mobile phones to deliver high levels of customer service and a lot is already happening like transactions are alerted by text, email account statements, to name a few. With smart phones becoming cheaper in the future, customized apps, suitable to different customer types and demographics could be the norm.
Moving from cash based to cashless transactions will require a major paradigm shift as far as consumers are concerned and that will be a major challenge for all stake holders.
EVENTS FOR YOUR DIARY
What: 2013 Payments Summit When: 5 - 7 February 2013 Where: Grand America Hotel, Salt Lake City Website: www.cvent.com/events/2013-payments-summit/eventsummary-7c5bd01867cc4b64b85ea8bb33a97c16.aspx
What: FinovateEuorpe When: 12 - 13 February 2013 Where: Old Billingsgate Market Hall, London, UK Website: http://www.finovate.com/europe2013/index.html
What: Merchant Payments Ecosystem When: 12 - 14 February 2013 Where: Berlin, Germany Website: www.merchantpaymentsecosystem.com
What: Finance for your Future 2013 When: 14 - 16 February 2013 Where: KICC, Nairobi, Kenya Website: http://aitecafrica.com/event/view/97
What: 4th Annual World Cards & Payments Summit 2013 When: 19 - 20 February 2013 Where: Dubai ,UAE Website: http://www.fleminggulf.com/conferenceview/4th-AnnualWorld-Cards---Payments-Summit-2013/362
What: Mobile World Congress When: 25 - 28 February 2013 Where: Barcelona, Spain Website: www.mobileworldcongress.com
What: The 2013 Mobile Payments & NFC Forum When: 26 - 27 February 2013 Where: Crowne Plaza, Auckland, New Zealand Website: http://www.conferenz.co.nz/conferences/mobile-paymentsnfc-forum
What: ICT for Africa 2013 When: 20 - 23 February 2013 Where: Harare, Zimbabwe Website: http://www.ictforafrica.org
www.technologybanker.com | 31
NEW APPOINTMENTS:
Who’s Who in the African Banking, Finance and Telecommunication Sector The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been. Henry A. Kissinger This month, Technology Banker brings you newly assigned leaders who are hope to take African banking, finance and telecommunication sector, to heights it has yet to achieve.
Adan Mohamed Appointment: Chief Administrative Officer, Barclays Bank Africa Country: Kenya, Uganda, Barclays Tanzania, National Bank of Commerce Tanzania Seychelles, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Ghana and Nigeria The current Managing Director (MD) for East and West Africa as well as Kenyan operations head, Mr Adan Mohamed will take up his new role as the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) for Barclays Africa by 13 February 2013. Mohamed is set to lead the bank’s operations in countries including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Ghana, Nigeria as well as the National Bank of Commerce Tanzania Seychelles. He will be based in Nairobi, the economic and commercial hub for regional and global businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Jeremy Awori Appointment: Chief Executive Officer, Barclays Bank Country: Kenya Jeremy Awori, former Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Standard Chartered Tanzania including its regional sales, was appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Barclays Bank in Kenya. Awori, was also the performance director of the bank’s operations in Dubai. Awori’s appointment will commence on 13 February 2013 when he will directly report to the newly appointed Chief Administrative Officer (COA) of Barclays Africa. Mr Adan Mohamed.
32 | Technology Banker January 2013
Thamsanqa Mbele Appointment: Managing Director, Tata Africa Country: Africa Thamsanqa Mbele, after joining Tata Africa in 15 October 2012 as a Managing Director designate (MD), will be taking over Raman Dhawan’s position as Managing Director. Mbele will take up the MD position after Dhawan’s superannuation in November 2013. Mbele was the former General Electric’s (GE) president and CEO for its South African operations.
Xavier Gobille Appointment: Executive Director, Tata Africa Country: Africa Xavier Gobille joined Tata Africa on 15 October 2012 as its Executive Director. He will also handle the auto and allied distribution of the company. He will be directly reporting to Mr Thamsanqa Mbele with guidance from Tata Africa’s current MD, Raman Dhawan.
KCB Group has appointed Joshua Nyamweya Oigara as the new Chief Executive. Oigara will take over the position from Martin Odour-Otieno on 1st January 2013. He had undergone a transparent and thorough recruitment process to get the position. Oigara has acquired his expertise in strategy, commercial business, performance improvements, information technology excellence and business advisory by working in different top positions in Bamburi Cement Limited. He took up his MBA degree from Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia, and received his Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce with Major in Accounting from the University of Nairobi. Millicom International Cellular SA has welcomed 4 new members to its executive committee. Appointments are as follows:
Other Appointments at a glance: • Mark Zagar, formerly the Executive Vice President of Finance at MTG prior to joining Millicom, is now the Executive Vice President (EVP) of Controlling and Analytics. Zagar’s appointment will start on February 2013. • Anders Nilsson appointed as its new Executive Vice President (EVP) of Commerce and Services. Nilsson’s appointment will start in January 2013. His duties will include managing the Mobile Financial Businesses which was previously headed by François-Xavier Roger including the newly established Online Division of Millicom. • Martin Lewerth, former Executive Vice President of Pay TV and Technology at MTG, Martin Lewerth was appointed as the new Executive Vice President of Home and Digital Media in Millicom International Cellular SA. Lewerth’s appointment is for immediate effect. • Xavier Rocoplan, holding the position of Chief Global Networks Officer since April 2012, he was appointed as the new Executive Vice President and Chief Technical and IT Officer in Millicom.
www.technologybanker.com | 33
VENDORS DIRECTORY
Altobridge
Product/Service: satellite service for transactional applications, standard Internet access including web surfing, email, VoIP and similar applications Contact: +353 66 719 0210 www.altobridge.com
Amazon
Product/Service: cloud computing and other web services http://aws.amazon.com
Entersekt
Product/Service: banking security platform (online banking, mobile banking, card transactions) Contact: +27 21 815 2800 info-africa@entersekt.com Website: www.entersekt.com
Global Bankers Institute
Product/Service: training and consulting support for banks and financial institutions and companies around the world Contact: +1 212 579 5500 inquiries@globalbankersinstitute.com Website: www.globalbankersinstitute.com
BusyInternet
Product: Broadband, Data Storage & Data Hosting Contact: +233 302 258800 http://www.busyinternet.com
KAL
Product/Service: atm software products Contact: +1 513 864 8990 Website: www.kal.com
Clear Path Analysis
Products/Service: online reports in the financial services and investments sector Contact: +44 020 7936 9447 Website: www.clearpathanalysis.com
Infosys Finacle
Product: core banking, mobile banking, e-banking Contact (EMEA): +44 776 651 0099 Website: www.infosys.com/finacle
CWG
Products/Service: automation solution for business processes and operations, infrastructure, Managed Services, Software Lincensing, Connectivity (Radio, Fibre, VSAT, Internet) Contact: 234-1- 2704674-5, 8516813, info.cwl@cwlgroup.com
34 | Technology Banker January 2013
INETCO
Product/Service: application management solution Contact: +1 604 451 1567 sales@inetco.com www.inetco.com
Inmarsat
Product/Service: broadband, voice and data connection, machine-to-machine connection Website: www.inmarsat.com
SatADSL
Product/Service: satellite service for transactional applications, standard Internet access including web surfing, email, VoIP and similar applications Contact: +32 478 541 999 Website: www.satadsl.net
iVeri
Product/Service: Multi-channel transaction technology Contact: +27 112 694 006 sales@iveri.com www.iveri.com
Trusteer
MCash
VTN
Product/Service: online payment solutions Contact: +256 414 233 799 Website: www.mcash.ug
Product/Service: security solution Contact: +1(617) 606-7755 Website: www.trusteer.com
Product/Service: broadband, voice and data connection, machine-to-machine connection Contact: +234 704 191 1945/ +234 813 899 4140/ +234 9 999 0952 www.virtualterminalnetwork.com
uGenius
Products/Service: Video Banking Contact: +1 801 619 5200 sales@ugenius.com www.ugenius.com
Ovum
Product/Service: Informa Business, research Contact: +44 20 7017 6970 crmgroup@ovum.com www.ovum.com
Not listed on this directory? Contact Jenny Howard on: +44(0)1442 345 379 or email jenny@technologybanker.com
www.technologybanker.com | 35
www.clearpathanalysis.com
UPCoMing REPoRTs To DownLoAD foR fREE...
data & teChnoloGY for emploYee benefits
fund & asset manaGement teChnoloGY
PUBLISHED 1st OCTOBER
PUBLISHED 29th OCTOBER
asset manaGement for insuranCe, europe
auto-enrolment for pension plans, uk
PUBLISHED 25th FEBRUARY
PUBLISHED 14th JANUARY
EDUCATE THE
MARKETPLACE Collaborate with us on informative finanCial and bespoke reports
for more information visit: www.clearpathanalysis.com t: +44 (0) 207 936 9450 e: marketing@clearpathanalysis.com