Disruptive technologies have taken over the world by storm, hardly sparing any industry. But nowhere else is the change so dominant as compared to the BFSI industry and especially when it comes to the banks.

Since time immemorial, banks have been at the forefront of providing finance related assistance and enabling efficient wealth management for the population around the world. But regardless of its long-standing presence, in a continent like Africa, the BFSI sector has still got miles to cover.

As per the World Bank data more than half of the adult population in Africa is unbanked where a huge chunk is still devoid of any financial service whatsoever. This obviously is due to a variety of reasons like lack of proper documents, no legal identity, credibility-oriented issues, limited access to information, other societal challenges, etc.

But with the changing times, as more and more fintech companies are showing rapid success in Africa with their new digital products and services, the banks too are actively seeking the digital transformation route.

Not only it’s opening the gate to financial assistance for the underserved Africans but they are also finding it quite convenient to adapt and make use of this change. Convenience is the king and through digital innovations the banks in Africa are constantly trying to make life as convenient as possible for the Africans. Not to forget, that the Covid-19 pandemic has only sped up the entire process, as going cashless and operating from the comfort and safety of home is the only viable option.

Moreover, it won’t be wrong to say that these digital transformations are driving financial inclusion in the continent, thereby making financial assistance accessible for everyone.

Let’s look at the Top 5 players in African BFSI which are actively implementing digital transformation strategies:

1. Standard Bank: Africa’s largest financial institution, Standard Bank, has partnered with Microsoft to accelerate digital transformation and take Africa’s growth to the next level.

The two Fortune 500 companies are aiming towards creating a digital platform, application modernization and cloud migration of the bank. The primary agenda is to meet the present needs of the customers through innovation while being cost-efficient.

Some of the top priorities between the two companies involve transferring workloads and applications to Microsoft Azure in order to enable organizational efficiency as well as workforce collaboration with Azure, PowerApps, Workplace Analytics and Microsoft Teams.

As per Sim Tshabalala, Chief Executive- Standard Bank Group, investing in the cloud will enable the bank’s strategic transformation from a traditional financial institution into a digital one. The cloud-first strategy will also be supported by end-to-end security and data-driven insights that will yield tangible results.

The bank hopes to achieve 100 million customers in Africa over the next five years.

2. First National Bank (FNB): At the 2016 African FinTech awards, First National Bank received the title of the “Most Innovative Bank in Africa”.

FNB’s culture has always revolved around effective innovations. Its 5.0 version of its award-winning banking app offers new-age features such as fingerprint verification, tap and pay and the option of having a secure chat with a private banker. The bank also offers a watch app.

FNB’s list of innovations continues to grow and to date the bank has implemented more than 9000 innovations, which have completely changed the BFSI landscape and especially the way banking is perceived in the continent.

From cutting-edge mobile payments solutions to enabling customers enjoy banking through self-service platforms, FNB has covered it all.

3. Ecobank: Ecobank has capitalized on the idea of using technology for automating internal processes, monitoring performance and improving compliance, thereby enabling more cost savings.

The bank’s number one priority is to meet the customer’s needs of the hour through in-house innovations where it has also made robust tie ups with the global fintech providers like Mastercard, Visa, Microsoft, etc.

With its unified, multilingual Ecobank mobile app, the bank has spread its operation in 33 countries. After its launch, Ecobank mobile app garnered 500,000 downloads in just five months, owing to the wide range of banking solutions that it provides.

4. Standard Chartered Bank: Between 2017 to 2019, Standard Chartered launched digital banks in eight different markets across Sub-Saharan Africa.

With its objective of taking digital transformation to the next level, in order to serve the growing demands of the continent’s younger tech-savvy population, the bank launched SC Keyboard that gives customers the access to numerous financial services from any social or messaging platform and that too without having to open the banking app. Some of the services include money transfer in real-time, utility bills payment, instant balance check, etc.

Mohamed Abdel Razak, regional CIO for Africa and the Middle East for Standard Chartered, stated that in 2020 the bank witnessed a surge of 150,000 new accounts owing to the fully digitized services where client onboarding takes less than 15 minutes.

5. Central Bank of Nigeria: As per the latest news, the Central Bank of Nigeria is planning to introduce its own central bank digital currency (CBDC) by the end of 2021.

An IT specialist, Rakiya Mohammed, from the Central Bank of Nigeria mentioned during a news briefing that the bank has been working on the idea for two years and might make an announcement soon.

At a time where the cryptocurrency landscape is rapidly evolving around the globe, Central Bank of Nigeria is developing its CBDC to complement and act as an extension of its physical currency, in order to maximize returns.