Nedbank wins the best digital bank in Africa award for the second year in a row, courtesy of its push to reform and re-engineer its IT system, with the aim of cutting costs, attracting new business and favouring an approach that focuses on evolution rather than revolution.
The South Africa-based lender’s plan has long been to eschew a big-bang approach to designing and redeploying its digital stack. Instead, it chose to pursue managed evolution, enabling it to roll out digital services as they come on stream.
Nedbank reckons its programme was 95% complete at the end of 2023 and aims for full integration by the end of this year. This has enabled it to cut its roster of large systems to 69 from 250 – with a plan to reduce the final number to as few as 60.
“In March 2023, we were the first regional bank to deploy rapid payments systems on all of our digital channels,” says the bank’s head of channel strategy and innovation delivery, Tina Pieterse.
Managed evolution has helped the firm in a number of ways, beyond building a first-rate IT stack. During 2023, the platform helped boost Nedbank’s roster of digitally active retail clients in its home market of South Africa by 10%, to 2.9 million. This acceleration was aided by an upgrade to the firm’s Nedbank Money app, which can open new accounts for clients in less than five minutes.
Meanwhile, its simplified client-onboarding platforms – Eclipse for retail clients and Nedbank Business Hub for its corporate customers – continue to mature and expand. So far in 2024, the bank has posted annualized digital sales growth of 7%.
[Avo] gives the bank vital insight into client spending, and can be adapted to incorporate financial and non-financial services
Every year, Nedbank bolts new services onto Avo, a super-app that enables clients to buy essential products and services online and have them delivered securely to homes and offices. It is a platform that, notes Pieterse, gives the bank vital insight into client spending, and can be adapted to incorporate financial and non-financial services.
Avo SuperShop saw customer numbers rise 23% year on year in 2023, to more than 2.6 million. Avo Solar, a new service unveiled in August 2023 for individuals and businesses, has already proven a success, finalising more than 200 solar residential installations within the first six months.
Perhaps the super-app’s most popular feature is Avo Auto. The digital car-sales platform now hosts close to 2,000 accredited dealers and more than 25,000 automobiles. As of the end of 2023, cars with a total value of R500 million ($26.9 million) had been sold via the application.
“We created a one-stop shop journey for the client, which connects the e-commerce space and the banking space,” says Pieterse.
