Growth of online banking-over the counter down by 20%

By David Mugabe
Fewer people are lining up in banking halls as online banking and mobile money transactions pick up.

Standard Chartered Bank Uganda over the counter transactions have fallen by over 20% over the last about seven (7) months.

Raheel Ahmed Standard Chartered’ s regional head of consumer banking stressed that the strategy is to now use technology and the digital platform to expand the bank’s reach to the customer complimenting the  physical branches especially for the young.

This according to Ahmed is against the background that customer experience has become completely digital but very demanding as well.

“You will see physical sites when dealing with things like mortgages but digital will be the future, the more digital you make it, the more proliferation of financial inclusion,” the amount of investment and banking will increase exponentially,” said Ahmed during an interview recently.

Africa is the highest growth market globally currently driven by rising population (market), mostly young and possessing 60% of the world’s arable land and natural resources. The growth of the consumer led demand means there is more prosperity which all present new business opportunities.

One of the challenges remains the low rates of savings for investments while the economy is still largely cash driven generally across Africa. Because of this, the bank is using its SME division to train and encourage customers to adapt more financial planning.

Raheel said the mobile telecom sector is showing banking the way and agency banking will work with telecoms to create more penetration. Uganda’s banking penetration remains around 15%.

Because of the huge number of business people traversing Far East Asia, Standard Chartered is helping facilitate this seamless trade by its scale in the Middle East and Asia.

Raheel observes that the budding oil industry will improve lives of consumers and banking will benefit as well. But he noted that it will all depend on how effectively government use the wealth especially in developing health, infrastructure and education which all improve the lives of the population.

“There is significant potential, the population is growing and hopefully the economy will grow at a fats rate,” said Ahmed.