The State of Savings and Retail Banking in Africa
Scale2Save Campaign
Micro savings, maximum impact.
The WSBI has conducted two research reports tracking the progress of retail and savings banks in their financial inclusion efforts across Africa (2018, 2019). These reports found that challenges persist around driving client centricity within the institution as well as the formation of partnerships across institutions to offer more low cost effective products.
In 2020 and 2021, the research efforts are focusing on finding solutions to these challenges. The research focus has thus turned to producing a series of case studies, each of which focuses on one theme that an institution may focus on to drive its response to the challenges outlined above.
The case studies are:
COVID-19 in Africa – Customer, FSP and regulator perspectives: The first case study looks at the impact of COVID-19 on institutions and the retail financial services market. Whilst it does not propose solutions similar to the other case studies, it helps frame the additional challenges that institutions faced during the upheaval that accompanied the pandemic. Leveraging mobile for the low income market: The mobile phone is becoming ubiquitous across Africa. Its full potential to offer financial services has however not been entirely exploited. What lessons exist for FSPs that are looking at leveraging mobile engagements with their customers in Africa.
Innovative business models and partnerships: Financial services providers have many options to partner with other institutions to enhance their offering to the market and achieve cost effective scale. What have been some of the successful innovative models applied across Africa?
Serving customers effectively through digitisation: Digital is touted as more efficient, simple and effective. How have institutions gone about driving digital transformation of their own internal systems, as well as their client engagements. Are there lessons to be had for institutions embarking on a digitisation journey?
Financial services for a specific market – Agriculture: The African economy has a large agricultural sector that plays a key role in its economic development, as well as the livelihood of its people. What have FSPs been doing to target this key market
Tentative – Client centricity and new data: The final case study is tentatively scheduled to focus on designing truly customer-centric products by leveraging information that has been previously unused by FSPs.
Please join us for a discussion on the third and fourth case studies – where these studies will be presented and debated across the African membership. The agenda for the discussion is outlined below.
Programme
15.00 – Welcome
15.05 – Introduction
Overview of the State of the Industry research series
15.15 – Business models for the mass market
What options are available for an FSP operating in the low-income market?
When is which option ideally deployed?
15.30 – Digitalisation to serve low-income customers
Digitalisation in context, more than a channel
Take-aways from institutions that successfully implemented digitalisation
15.45 – Case study – ABB
Barid-Cash, a successful case of digitalisation across a business
Partnerships, how has it served ABB?
16.00 – Discussion
16.15 – Conclusions
Scale2Save
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Scale2Save Campaign
Micro savings, maximum impact.
Africa Regional Group Meeting 2019 / 27-29 March 2019 | Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
The 25th edition of the Africa Regional Group Meeting of WSBI will be hosted by People’s Own Savings Bank (POSB) and organised in close cooperation with Agribank. The event will bring together the converging industries and innovations shaping Africa’s digital banking future.
The 25th Africa Regional Group Meeting will be an opportunity to take stock of private and public actors’ commitments and major achievements of WSBI African members in digital financial inclusion. The meeting will focus on how WSBI members’ innovation and digital policies contribute to the improvement of their customer journey and, ultimately, to the national level of financial inclusion.
Besides MNOs fierce competition, the meeting will consider issues like open banking and APIs and how they will change the banking landscape, leading financial institutions to increasingly partner with Fintech in a never ending search to bring flexible innovative solutions to their customers.
The event will show the next steps towards implementation of financial innovation by showcasing the development and outreach of innovative products, asset classes, and business lines.
It will also describe banks’ challenges in becoming more customer centric, including latest innovations in technology, especially in rural areas. Within the framework of its Scale2save programme with the Mastercard Foundation, the aim of which is to support banks to reach scale and sustainability with low-balance accounts, WSBI will present its industry report and several WSBI members progress in financial inclusion.
These key issues will gather high-level representatives of the financial industry, regulatory and supervisory authorities, central banks, governments and private sectors.
Scale2Save
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