Heritage Bank has reiterated its commitment to introducing more innovative banking products and services to meet the needs of its customers.
Ifie Sekibo managing director/Chief Executive, Heritage Bank Limited said this while speaking on ‘Innovation in Financial Services Delivery’ at the annual Cashless Card Expo of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
According to him, Heritage Bank, transformed the interior of banking halls, and was the first bank without an in-house Data center. “We are the first to deploy deposit machines in all branches, and also launched the first real transparent MasterCard in Nigeria. In addition to these, Heritage Bank transformed small and medium enterprise (SME) banking.”
Heritage bank, he noted, is a product of innovation, and hence encourage deployment of innovative platforms.
“We bounced back on the waves of innovative thinking, we thrive on an innovative ecosystem, we encourage and deploy innovative platforms”, he said.
Sekibo pointed out that innovation is inevitable for the banking industry. This he said is due to changing dynamics across the globe which has penetrated banking. These changes, he noted are driven by forces of globalisation, self service mobile devices and regulation, adding that the impact of these changes on the Nigerian banking landscape is reflected in the sharp increase in the growth of electronic payment services between 2012 and 2014 in the country.
He noted that, “The volume of e-payment in Nigeria grew from N18.1 trillion in 2012 to N35.1 trillion in 2014. While transactions through PoS increased from N48 billion in 2013 to N312 billion in 2014, Instant Pay transactions increased from N3.8 trillion in 2012 to N19.9 trillion in 2014”. He said that the growth in e-payment however does not mirror the huge population of mobile phone users in the country.
“There are over 105 million mobile phones users in Nigeria. Also 60 million of Nigerians do not have bank accounts but have phones. Further, research has shown that 92 percent of banking transactions can be done without human intervention.
“Convenient banking is the norm and differentiation can only come via innovation. E-payment is now a commodity, innovative e-payment is the way to go”, he said
Describing innovation has a combination of ideas and execution; he said that innovation is not necessarily invention or imagination. Ideas are not good enough, implementation is critical. Innovation is about making complex problems simple, not being afraid to make mistakes, willingness to think outside the box and steadfast commitment to execution”, he added.
