FNB ON A DRIVE TO DROP BANKING COSTS, CUSTOMER WAITING TIMES

MBABANE - After several announcements in the past two years about efforts FNB has been making to improve overall service levels in specifically addressing long queues in its branches, FNB CEO Dennis Mbingo has confirmed that the bank has officially commissioned it’s new automated deposit tellers (ADTs). 

In an interview with this newspaper, Mbingo confirmed that the project was initiated in 2015 in response to customer complaints about waiting times in branches. 
In his comments, Mbingo highlighted that the first ADT’s were purchased in 2015 and it has taken over two years to write the appropriate software to read local Emalangeni and South African currency notes.

  “We obsessed over simplicity and practicality.  Despite having the capability to launch the ADTs in 2016 and taking in only one currency, we understood that customers may not have the time to separate local and Rand notes, and then waiting for one transaction to finish before another is started”, he noted.  The first FNB ADTs became fully functional in April 2017, but a full launch was delayed until the currency issues were finalised.

different future awaits banks

The FNB CEO also confirmed his assessment that a different future awaits banking services in the region and especially in the country.  “We cannot have all other sectors impacted by customer expectations of simplification through technology, lowering of transactional costs, improving turnaround times and broader inclusion of the citizenry in key services, and then expect banking to be protected from these changes.  We have to evolve. 

We have to keep investing in a different customer experience, otherwise we risk being overtaken by others”, he observed.  Mbingo said it is telling that during the pilot phase, the FNB ADT’s demonstrated more than enough capability to take in more deposits in one day than the previous ATMs were doing in a month.  Wesley Groening, who heads FNB’s Points of Presence, confirmed this when stating that these devices are expected to take in at least E 1 billion in deposits by the end of 2018. 

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