By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)-
Union Bank of Nigeria Plc (UBN) has deployed the Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Solution 12.0; a new core banking application to modernise its infrastructure, improve operating efficiency and customer service delivery.
To help improve business operations and enhance the customer experience, UBN deployed the latest version of Oracle FLEXCUBE as the single operating platform for its countrywide network.
As one of Nigeria’s top tier lenders with an extensive network of over 320 branches across Nigeria, the bank seeks to better its operations with the new platform to address its corporate, retail and investment banking needs, thereby positioning itself as a highly respected provider of quality banking services in Nigeria.
Yomi Akinade, chief information officer (CIO) of the bank said with the new platform, the bank would be enhancing and standardising its operations across the country by leveraging on the capabilities of the new technology. “We will have a common operating platform in our extensive network of over 320 branches across Nigeria,” he said.
Akinade disclosed Union Bank went live with the new platform on April 7, 2015, a quick review of current banking platforms in the industry shows that the new technology puts lender at the top with this state of the art technology.
He said since the bank embarked on restructuring in 2010; his team has implemented well over 70 technology projects.
“There are three (3) key areas on the over 70 technology projects, which include: improving customers’ services, securing customers and the bank’s data as well improving our productivity as an institution,” he affirmed.
The new platform is in line with the bank’s goal of becoming a highly respected provider of quality banking services within six (6) areas of focus according to Emeka Emuwa, GMD/CEO of UBN at a media parley on March 2014.
“The six (6) major areas of commitment we are focusing on include: quality of customers experience, quality of client base, quality of talent, quality of banking platform, quality of professional standards and quality of the banks’ earnings.”
Akinade affirmed that during the time of the upgrade, customers and the general public may experience some challenges, but measures have been put in place to ensure continuous seamless service delivery in case of disruptions during implementation.
“As you well know, when you go live with a major massive complex project like this, there would be teething issues. So, there are challenges and customers should understand this; but is for their own long term benefit; because we would have a much more superior service offering when the system runs fully,” he added.
He affirmed UBN is trying to bring all of its third party applications up in the earliest possible time, when over 90 percent of those applications would be working.
The Bank says some of challenges being experienced with the current system include the maintenance of multiple servers in branches, constant need for system enhancement when a new field is required on the system. “This usually takes months to resolve,” the bank noted.
Others are income leakage since some charges and new products could not be automated or configured, customer mandate maintained on third party applications instead of the core banking application, complexity in report generation, audit trail on maintenances and issue of account replication from the retail to the corporate modules are some of the challenges with the old version.
With the upgrade to the Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Solution 12.0, the bank would have, and enjoy a central server which would be maintained at the head office, “this would also reduce running cost of maintaining multiple servers,” the lender added.
Also, the new application allows users a level of flexibility and extensibility by introducing User Defined Fields (UDFs), which was prior to this time not defined. “An example is the BVN number, which was recently introduced and now needs to be captured for each customer. The Bank can on its own customise a field for this without having to request for offshore customisations. This will reduce cost; improve time-to-market and product offerings to customers,” UBN disclosed.
A vital feature of the upgraded FLEXCUBE is that the application now has the capability to store customer image and signature. “No withdrawals can be made on an account if no mandate is maintained. This functionality saves the Bank the cost of paying Vendors for maintaining third party applications and check the incident of fraud as no withdrawals can be made on an account if no mandate is maintained,” UBN affirmed.
Other benefits of the Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Solution 12.0 includes developing and customising reports in house using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise (OBIE) analytics which allows the bank generate such reports quickly for management decisions and forecasts. “This will also greatly improve our response time to market demands”, said the lender.
Akinade further disclosed the new platform enables the bank when closed to customers to run its end of day in two (2) to three (3) hours; that’s less than half of the time spent in the past doing the same process. “What that means is well before 8:00 am our system is ready for our customers; whereas in the past, we struggle to make the system available to customers,” he added.
