People’s Bank creates history with launch of fully-fledged Digital Centre. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe whose vision is to enable the country with digital commerce recently inaugurated the country’s first ‘Digital Centre’ at the historic People’s Bank building at York Street, Colombo 1. People’s Bank which is State owned with the opening of the fully-fledged Digital Centre achieves a unique milestone in its digitalization drive and creates history in the country’s banking industry.
This is a
state-of-the-art banking center on par with international standards and
People’s Bank requests the public to visit and experience this revolution. The Digital Platform provides a new customer
experience for account opening, transforming a traditional forms-based process
into a digital, paperless process with bank staff guiding customers’ choice of
product and services through electronic devices provided by the bank.
Initially, the Bank staff will be at hand to assist customers to navigate
Digital Banking until they feel comfortable to conduct transactions without
assistance. The launch of this Digital Centre marks a quantum leap for the bank
in its dynamic leadership to become the most digitalized bank, to unlock the
benefits of digitalization for its customers.
The services
launched through the Digital Platform use the capabilities of a tablet to
enable the bank’s customers to browse the bank’s products and services and then
select the required products. The tablet is then used to capture the necessary
data, including use of the tablet camera to capture document images and digital
signatures.
In this way,
the process is paperless, the bank staff can be on the move with the customer
and the customer experience is greatly enhanced by shortening the time it takes
to open an account because there is no form-filling and approvals are in
real-time on mobile devices. Behind the customer experience lies a comprehensive
new set of digital processes. Each is
designed as one e2e (end-to-end) real-time, straight-through process to enable
timely fulfilment of customer needs.
Rules and work-flow technology ensure that accounts are opened according
to centralized bank policy with no or minimum manual intervention according to
the bank’s rules.
These new
digital processes cut across the typical bank silo organizational
responsibilities which traditionally use manual processes and cause lengthy
turn-around times that frustrate customers.
As an example, a customer can open an account and apply for a debit
card, personal and business loans and register for digital services at the same
time in a single straight through digital process e2e. The Bank expects to roll
our more fully digitalized branches over the coming months, thus fulfilling its
sustainability pledge to reduce its carbon footprint and benefitting the
environment by promoting paperless banking.
The bank’s
ambitious digitalization drive will empower it to deliver a seamless digital
experience to customers and elevate Sri Lanka’s banking and financial services
to an international digital fulfilment standard via its deployed digital
platform within the shortest period of time.
The rise of the digital bank globally
As European consumers move online, retail banks will
have to follow. The problem is that most banks aren’t ready. Across Europe, retail banks have digitized only 20% to 40% of
their processes; 90% of European banks invest less than 0.5% of their total
spending on digital. As a result, most have relatively shallow digital
offerings focused on enabling basic customer transactions. Neither customers nor digital
upstarts are likely to wait for retail banks to catch up. Recent
analysis shows that over the next 5 years, more than two-thirds of banking
customers in Europe are likely to be “self-directed” and highly adapted to the
online world.
In fact, these same consumers already take great
advantage of digital technologies in other industries—booking flights and
holidays, buying books and music, and increasingly shopping for groceries and
other goods via digital channels. Once a credible digital-banking proposition
exists, customer adoption will be breathtakingly fast and digital laggards will
be left exposed. We estimate that digital transformation will put upward of 30%
of the revenues of a typical European bank in play, particularly in
high-turnover products such as personal loans and payments.
We also estimate that banks can remove 20% to 25% of their
cost base by leveraging this digital shift to transform how they process and
service. Put together, the economics of a digital bank will give it a vast
competitive edge over a traditional incumbent. It’s therefore fair to say that
getting digital banking right is a do-or-die challenge.
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