Page 43 - ACCESS BANK ANNUAL REPORTS_eBook

identify and mitigate the inherent and potential risks in our sential quality when moving from the intimate to the mass
digital portfolio. It serves as a starting point for dealing with market in a push to recruit and retain millions of customers
fraud-related issues on digital platforms. over the next five years. To date, over N100 million worth of
transactions have been carried out by users chatting with
Tamara.
Digitising PayDay Loans and Account Opening An extension of the Basement concept, the Africa Fintech
Foundry (AFF) initiative offers a way to capture and direct
Over the last year, the Bank has optimised and digitised
the loan process for salary-earning customers. The Bank’s externally generated innovation to the Bank’s bottom line.
USSD (*901#) channel now serves as a platform to enable Through organised developer-community events, such as
salary earners to receive instant loans secured against their the March 2017 edition of the Recode Nigeria hackathon,
pay day. With the value of loans disbursed to customers on broad-based industry conferences such as the AFF Dis-
this platform standing at over N1 billion, the initiative has rupt conference in December 2017 and growth-focused
since been extended by way of strategic partnerships with collaborations such as the current cohort of the AFF Ac-
SystemSpec’s Remitta product, to include non-Access celerator programme taking place in the new state-of-the-
Bank customers, bringing over two million salary earners art “Foundry” building between February and June 2018,
into the scheme. the AFF identifies and selectively focuses the efforts of
emerging fintech disruptors on working collaboratively with
In the first half of the year, the account opening process the Bank to increase customer value and reduce the Bank’s
was digitally enhanced with the implementation of a simpli- cost-to-serve.
fied instant account opening using our USSD solution (on
the *901# code) to support our retail market storms. The
Bank’s reach and value propositions were extended and Ondigo
impacted a wider range of customers, who opened 45,000
accounts in the first phase of the retail campaign. Conse- Finally, the recent soft launch of the Bank’s all-inclusive
quently, a new e-mail account opening platform (the first Mobile Banking application, Ondigo, allows users to cre-
ever of its kind) was delivered which enabled the on-board- ate virtual cards. Adult users can gift these virtual cards to
ing of new customers via internally generated email. Pro- their children and dependents, increase their savings and
spective customers were able to receive their new Access perform a wide range of other banking transactions. The
Bank account numbers within 30 seconds, once their de- product, developed using agile methodology, delivers in-
tails were sent to the specified e-mail address. cremental features such as account opening, inter-bank
transfers and airtime purchase, among others, to an audi-
In the month of October, the Personal Banking team used ence of millennials and digital citizens who prefer modern
our various digital tools to sign on 2.8 million new custom- modes of interaction for their banking services.
ers.
The ongoing digital transformation of the Bank touches on
all facets of banking operations and is underpinned by the
current development of a continent-wide payments plat-
Digital Factory, Basement and Africa Fintech Foundry
form to facilitate intra-Africa trade for customers and pros-
In addition to the PayDay Loan and USSD/e-mail account pects on the continent and beyond.
opening solutions above, the Bank has expanded on the
Finnotech concept, previously encapsulated in the Base-
ment ideation platform. Transforming ideas into digital
solutions, the Bank’s digital factory now delivers trending
innovation, building solutions in response to challenges and
opportunities facing the Bank.
One such solution identified by the Basement programme
is “Tamara”, an artificial intelligence-driven chat-bot de-
signed to connect with and converse with millennial cus-
tomers and prospects, giving them access to banking
products and services using natural language processing
and machine learning to mimic the tone and mannerisms
of a human operator.

Tamara’s ability to hold millions of simultaneous conversa-
tions, each one uniquely tuned to the requirements of the
individual at the other end of the chat line, gives the Bank
a unique combination of scale and customisation; an es-

Access BAnk Plc 43
Annual Report & Accounts 2017