Absa Bank Kenya To Invest Ksh 1.6 Billion In Technology

Absa Bank Kenya is planning to invest over 1.6 billion shillings in technology to enhance service delivery as it marked one year since it rebranded from Barclays Bank of Kenya

Speaking at a media briefing at the bank’s Queensway branch in Nairobi, Absa Managing Director Jeremy Awori noted that delivering a differentiated customer experience remains at the core of the bank’s Growth, Transformation, and Returns strategy.

“In the next year, we will be rolling out over 60 different technology projects, all aimed at transforming our customer experience. Some of these include automation of our loan top-up process, a first-in-the market move that will enable our customers to apply and get top-ups on their existing loans within 15 minutes, and at the touch of a button,” he said.

The banks also planning to roll out a fully-fledged online Business Banking platform in the coming weeks among other exciting innovations across our business segments.

Absa Bank Kenya embarked on a brand transition four years ago and set out to fully transform the business into a truly customer-obsessed organization; one that puts the customer at the center of all decisions, propositions, and initiatives.

“In many ways, Covid-19 really challenged us to live up to our commitments to all our stakeholders. The pandemic has taught businesses across the world that we must really be prepared to live and operate in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous environment, and be agile enough to quickly adapt to changing realities,” said Mr. Awori.

Last year, the bank instituted different financial relief initiatives across its different customer segments to help customers navigate through the effects of the pandemic including loan relief and restructures valued at over 62 billion shillings covering over 59,000 accounts.

At the same time, Absa Bank offered specific capacity-building programs to SMEs to equip them with the necessary skills to overcome the challenges presented by the pandemic.

By proactively managing its business continuity processes, a 100 percent of the bank’s branches remained open and fully operational while digital platforms had a 99.8 percent uptime, even with numerous scheduled system upgrades.

 Despite the challenges in the macro-economic environment as a result of the pandemic, the bank continued to lend to various customers with a sizeable portion of this amount going to SME business.

An additional 50 million shillings was committed to various forces for good community-based initiatives in support of the fight against the pandemic.

The bank introduced the first-in-market Absa vertical debit and credit cards as well as revamped its SME Wezesha Biashara proposition to play a bigger role in the SME sector. This proposition offers unsecured loans of up to 10 million shillings which is the highest in the market, as well as LPO financing and invoice discounting of up to 50 million shillings amongst other benefits.

“As we celebrate our one-year anniversary, we recognize that the pandemic continues to threaten the survival of small and medium businesses which are major sources of employment and account for about 40 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As a business we are committed to supporting women in business particularly those in the SME sector, with a campaign that we hope to run across the entire Sub Saharan Africa,” Mr. Awori said.

The bank also introduced a new account dubbed Absa One, an all-in-one account with no minimum balance requirement and no monthly fees. This account also offers unsecured loans of up to 6 million shillings for individuals, Kes10 million for businesses, 0.5 percent cash back rewards on all ATM and debit card transactions and a multicurrency prepaid card with up to 8 major currencies.