Commercial banks embracing self-service banking

Following painful lessons from the pandemic, the majority of commercial banks have increased on new technologies to enable seamless account opening for clients.

Equity bank is the latest commercial bank to unveil a self-service platform that enables clients to open bank accounts without physically visiting the bank branch. 

Prior, Stanbic, Absa, Centenary, among others, launched similar services. 

The increased investment in new technologies has seen the sector post a 52% increase in the number of deposit accounts in the sector. 

According to data from Uganda Bankers Association (UBA), deposit accounts have grown to 18.5 million as at March 2021 from 12.2 million in 2018. 

“We are keeping pace with our tradition of providing ease and convenience of banking to our customers,” Michael Matovu Sseguya, Equity Bank’s Executive Director for Commercial banking, said during the launch of the service recently. 

Michael Matovu Sseguya, Executive Director, Commercial Banking, Equity Bank Uganda speaking during the launch. (Photo by Shamim Saad)

“Equity Bank is always seeking innovative ways of offering integrated financial services that socially and economically empower our customers and communities. We are confident that the public will find the platform convenient and easy to use,” Sseguya added. 

The sector innovations have helped widen access to financial services to underserved and unbanked customers. 

The banking and financial sector is currently implementing the access to the national identity and registration authority (NIRA) project aimed at enabling the interface between the national ID system and the banking and financial services sector to facilitate identity authentications at electronic transaction processing as well assist in electronic know your customer (KYC) validations at account opening.

During the annual bankers' conference last year, Mathias Katamba, the Chairman of Uganda Bankers Association (UBA) said the integration of the ID system will be key in improving banking services. 

“The expected benefits of the interface will include ease and growth of account opening, the rapid growth of e-products and services including credit transactions due diligence, and the establishment of a single reference customer view for existing customers,” he said.