Skye Bank Plc, leading financial institution in the country, says it is well positioned to provide superior service delivery to its teeming customers by virtue of the recent implementation of a three-pronged Information Technology (IT) transformation initiative.
Speaking with BusinessDay in an interview at the weekend, Amafonye Richard, chief information officer (CIO), Skye Bank Plc, pointed out that the initiative, which began two years ago, is expected to provide better operational efficiency, and put the financial institution in pole position to deliver on critical regulatory mandates of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
According to him, the transformation project, which stands on a tripod, looks at data centre re-modelling, network optimisation and security and an overhaul of the core banking application.
“Skye Bank is a merger of five banks, Amafonye said, noting that at the time of the merger, “we had to couple our systems together in order to get to market quickly and serve our customers. “After five years of the merger, we felt it was time to take a step back in order to accelerate the growth of the business.
We decided to put a purse to all of our investments in technology to understand the strategic thrust of the bank”, the Skye Bank CIO stated. With the initiative, the banks’ IT infrastructure is robust, resilient and can cope with the huge demands and complexities that the cashless initiative brings, he explained.
“If you ask customers to use your debit, credit cards and ATMs, systems availability is critical”. According to him, the company currently has a world-class data centre and a robust network that provides maximum redundancy.
Asked how the transformation initiative would put the bank ahead of competition, Amafonye said, “We have an active-active fail over scenerio. In our data centre, we have built in full redundancy. On our data centres, for any service, you have two instances of the same service running concurrently. Should one go down, the other one continues without hitches. We can guarantee service availability”.
One of the benefits of the transformation project is the ability to deploy new service with value propositions, he said, adding that the company has introduced an innovative online banking platform. Dubbed, ‘Skye Plus’, the platform offers customers a myraid of setvices that makes banking convenient, easy, more secure and fast.
Commenting on the features and benefits of the service, he said, “customers can check their balances and manage their accounts. Customers can also set up standng order onstructions and Direct Debits. They can transfer money, pay bills or people instantly, open new accounts, request for a new chequebook, ATM card or bank draft, amongst others.” The new banking platform – an offshoot of the transformation project, puts the customer in control as they have a 360 degree view of their account summary. “Customers can also control and manage their expense breakdown”, he further added. Speaking on some of the security features, Amafonye, explained that a robust registration process has been designed to help ensure that customers are protected from fraudsters and internet hackers.
