FNB has long been lauded as the most progressive of South Africa's big four banks and it has received global recognition of its innovative and digitisation initiatives. The bank added another award to its bulging trophy cabinet at the African FinTech Awards at the Finance Indaba Africa 2016 in October, beating Absa and Standard Bank to the honours in the Incumbent Bank category. But while FNB may have enjoyed much success over the past few years, according to CIO Peter Alkema, it is certainly not resting on its laurels.
In his pitch at the FinTech Awards, Peter took the judges and guests through FNB's journey to becoming one of the world's foremost digital-enabled banks. It began in 2011 and has seen the bank hand its clients more than R276 million in voucher savings. Today there are more than two million devices connected to its banking app, which was the first of its kind in the country. Peter also examined some of the "version 5.0" innovations that have been recently introduced to the market, which incorporates wearable, chat and fingerprint technologies.
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Peter was optimistic about the ever-expanding range of products and services FNB was making available, but insisted that the bank was going to great lengths to ensure that they remained accessible:
"We continue to push a very strong value proposition and disrupt areas, making sure that the relevant features that would be useful to our app users remain in a very simple, intuitive environment. You don't want to clutter an app experience with a shopping list of features that you can make available from a whole bunch of product house that are eager to make the products available. You need to retain the integrity of the user interface and the simple slick clean manner in which you designed it."
The African FinTech Awards celebrate innovators that shape the future of finance, and acknowledges the work these companies are doing to have a positive impact on their target markets. The nominees were chosen by a panel of industry experts, stakeholders and investors from all over the world, who selected the three finalists in six categories to deliver their pitch at the Indaba.
The Finance Indaba is the biggest annual event on the continent for financial managers and specialists who are seeking partnerships to drive progress. Thousands of delegates will gain valuable insights into realising financial performance and growth, becoming more efficient and accessing funding, among a host of other opportunities from leading players in financial services.
