Ecobank leads Pan African Digital Banking Transformation
Oracle FLEXCUBE and Oracle Banking Digital Experience are powering Ecobank’s digital-first strategy and creating a foundation for open banking.
“People are no longer just comparing their Ecobank e-commerce experience to other banks. They’re comparing us to their experience with a wide range of consumer organizations. Oracle FLEXCUBE is critical to helping us deliver on our customers’ rising expectations.”
Business challenges
Ecobank Transnational Inc. has a broad mission—providing financial services to customers in more than 30 African nations and beyond. The bank views its role as that of an economic catalyst, using financial services as a lever to help create a more inclusive society.
To advance its mission, Ecobank required a modern technology infrastructure that could support a digital-first strategy. The bank selected Oracle FLEXCUBE and Oracle Banking Digital Experience as the foundation for a new generation of financial services across West and Central Africa.
Being able to manufacture centrally and push our banking solutions to the countries in which we operate, we enable people, irrespective of their income level, to consume the latest of technology. We thank Oracle for partnering with us as we seek to deliver banking services to our customers, where they are at their point of need at the price point that they can afford.
Why Ecobank Transnational Chose Oracle
Oracle solutions are powering Ecobank’s digital-first strategy and creating a foundation for open banking that will dramatically elevate the customer experience and improve time to market for new solutions across the more than 30 countries in which Ecobank operates.
In addition, Oracle solutions enable the visibility required to fight digital crime and allow Ecobank to respond rapidly and effectively to regulators using a single source of truth.
Results
With Oracle FLEXCUBE and Oracle Banking Digital Experience, Ecobank can function as a banking group that serves more than 30 countries versus a group of banks. This is key to its strategy to manufacture centrally and distribute products domestically. With its Oracle banking solutions, Ecobank is rapidly advancing its digital strategy by offering more services to customers in an omnichannel environment.
Ecobank’s Oracle solutions will also play an important role in the bank’s vision for open banking and its evolving role as a gateway to business in Africa. It is working toward delivering a platform to fintechs and other organizations that want to do business in Africa. It envisions a sandbox where fintechs and other organizations can work with Ecobank to test their solutions and ultimately roll them out.
Ecobank has consolidated operations in two data centers running a single instance of its Oracle applications, versus having data centers in each country. This centralized strategy enables the bank to reduce capital and operational costs, including software licensing requirements.
The bank brings this same unified strategy to its mobile banking application. It has one application that runs in more than 30 countries, spanning four languages, and many currencies. The bank’s 20 million customers can download one app and consume Ecobank’s services anywhere.
The single-instance approach also helps the bank enhance regulatory compliance as it has a single platform and source of truth. As a result, Ecobank can respond rapidly and with confidence to regulator requests.
Ecobank implemented its Oracle FLEXCUBE upgrade and deployed Oracle Banking Digital Experience across its operations in more than 30 countries in record time—just 20 months.