United Bank embarks on digital transformation with Oracle
“Oracle Banking Digital Experience gives us the power to create new opportunities for digital services that will be fundamental to elevating the customer experience and fueling our future growth.”
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United Bank S.C., headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is a full-service financial institution offering its more than 1 million customers a wide range of commercial banking services via a network of 317 branches and 7 subbranches, as well as ATMs. It also delivers an expanding range of banking services via its online and mobile banking channels.
As the bank looks to its future, its aspirations include being one of the top five private banks in East Africa based on assets, as well as becoming the market leader for innovation and digitization. It understands that to achieve these goals—which are inherently linked—it must invest in a modern digital banking solution that enhances automation, efficiency, and the customer experience across all channels. The bank determined that it had the skilled IT team needed to implement the solution in house―without the help of an implementation partner. It achieved that goal brilliantly.
Why United Bank Chose Oracle
United Bank has a strong relationship with Oracle, running Oracle Database, Oracle middleware, and Oracle FLEXCUBE since 2008. As the bank focused on the decade ahead, its long-term success with Oracle made it an easy choice to extend the relationship by deploying a new version of Oracle FLEXCUBE as well as Oracle Banking Digital Experience.
“We view Oracle as family,” said Nebyat Assefa, director of business solutions and ebanking management at United Bank.
Risultati
The first phase of United Bank’s modernization initiative focused on the Oracle FLEXCUBE upgrade and went live on April 1, 2020. Components included core banking, consumer lending, retail banking, Islamic banking, loan origination, payments, and more.
The solution is enhancing service delivery at the bank’s 317 branches. United Bank eliminated multiple workflow segments by automating the loan origination process, enabling greater efficiency and faster processing.
United Bank is now upgrading its online banking platform to Oracle Banking Digital Experience. The new system will create an advanced online banking experience for customers. It will automate internal fund transfers, self-transfers, bill payments, domestic transfers, bulk payments, and more. Customers also will be able to open an account via a mobile device, accelerating the process and introducing new levels of convenience.
In the future, United Bank plans to incorporate additional digital services, such as chatbots, voice assistance, and merchant payments using scan to pay, as well as peer-to-peer payments features—extending capabilities and enhancing the customer experience.
United Bank executed the entire project in-house, using its highly skilled IT team. In preparation for the migration, team members attended approximately three weeks of offsite technical and functional training with Oracle for the FLEXCUBE migration. Members of the implementation team also attended two weeks of training on Oracle Banking Digital Experience at Oracle’s facilities in Mumbai in preparation for the deployment.