STANDARD LESOTHO BANK: Customer-Centric Banking with Added Cloud Convenience

Operating since 1995, Standard Lesotho Bank (SLB) currently employs close to 1,000 members of staff and has a national footprint in all the districts of Lesotho via a network of 18 branches, as well as specialised units that house the Head Office, Data Recovery and Operations Centre. The bank has a system of over 707 Point-of-Sale Machines and 93 ATMs strategically placed throughout the country, and in 2018, also rolled a fleet of seven Bulk Cash Deposit Machines enabling businesses to deposit cash at any time.

“Our vision is to be the preferred and leading financial services provider in Lesotho,” SLB opens. “But we’re more than just a bank: we look beyond the financial outcome to create more value socially, economically, and environmentally. As a leading Africa-focused financial services organisation, Africa is our home, and we drive her growth.”

Part of the Standard Bank Group, Africa’s largest by assets, SLB provides the full spectrum of financial services offered through two major divisions: Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB) and Personal and Business Banking (PBB), with the CIB division additionally fulfilling a wide range of requirements for banking, finance, trading, investment, risk management and advisory services. The PBB unit offers banking and other financial services to individuals, small-to-medium enterprises, and commercial businesses.

FINANCIAL INCLUSION

Having been rocked by the passing in October 2020 of CEO Kenrick Cockerill, who leaves the legacy of a dedicated, decorated 32-year career with the Standard Bank group in which he had held several key leadership and specialist roles, Anton Nicolaisen stepped up to assume the position in March 2021. Appointing a successor to a role of this import represents a colossal challenge in the best of circumstances; amid this tragedy and tribulation it becomes near-insurmountable.

As he detailed last year, however, Nicolaisen is a self-confessed ‘career banker’, himself accruing a rich, deep vein of experience over a more than 30-year history with Standard Bank Group, always having dreamed of exposure in other geographical areas than South Africa alone. “One thing I always tell people both within and outside of the Standard Bank Group,” he disclosed, “is how many awesome opportunities are there waiting to be seized, to allow you to live out these dreams.”

Most recently deployed in Gauteng, following his move to Lesotho Nicolaisen was immediately able to assess and compare the two modes of operation last year, drawing some surprising conclusions along the way. “As might be the expectation, in the South African context there are certainly some things which are further ahead,” Nicolaisen says, “but actually, I came into Lesotho and found that other aspects of the business are moving forward much more quickly.

“I have learnt never to assume that one will automatically be better than the other, because there were some very distinct advancements that the Lesotho team had made that were brilliant.”

The economic environment of the last 12 months has been extraordinarily difficult, with consumers under inflation pressures, Nicolaisen explains. “In Lesotho transport contributes a significant percentage to the overall financial basket, and a big part of our population is very dependent on public transport; those prices rising only amplified this pressure. Fortunately, our asset book and our bad debt remain very healthy at this stage.

“From a Lesotho perspective, financial inclusion is something that we are driving very hard, and which is backed by both the government and the central bank. A pricing directive was implemented and had a marked impact on our revenue, and we were forced to counter that by being more innovative in our approach to serving our customers differently.”

CLOUD ADOPTION

“Customer service is hugely important, and understanding our customers and their changing demands better is critical. Ultimately, we would like to become much more flexible in terms of our offerings and make changes a lot more quickly.” Given the benefits of agility, flexibility and scalability at low infrastructure and computing costs, it is little wonder that Nicolaisen is able to detail to us SLB’s fervent adoption of cloud technologies.

“Embarking on our cloud migration journey has represented one of our major investments from a technology and investment point of view,” he relays. “Cloud will assist us massively in terms of the value that we will create from having up to date systems and the software we have available.”

Another of SLB’s key journeys that Nicolaisen wishes to zero in on concerns personalisation, and a landmark partnership with Salesforce, the world’s premier customer relationship management (CRM) platform. It marks a key step in its bid to become a true platform business and deliver positive digital experiences to its clients, he affirms.

“It is a major step towards transforming the Standard Bank Group into a client-centred platform business that delivers a range of individualised, instantly available solutions, services and opportunities, enabled by modern digital technologies and delivered in whatever way a client prefers,” Nicolaisen explains.

“Our goal is to use our data capabilities to build deeper, better, and more enduring relationships with our clients. Our aim is to be able to digitise and create much more current solutions in order to migrate our customers out of our branches, and onto self-serving platforms. We want to really maximise our use of the digital approach, and we see our platforms as a key way to reach customers especially in the rural areas.”

Nicolaisen stresses the importance of platform banking, and the desire to move toward this model. As the banking sector digitises, platform banking is a technologically- enabled integration of traditional and digital banking, fintech and third parties that transforms the traditional paradigm into a customer-centric one. “We want to be a digital, platform-based bank, and we want to achieve this by 2025” he stresses.

“We want inclusivity and we want our customers to use our platform. In Lesotho, our aim is to reach each and every citizen in the country in some way.” In this bid to increase financial inclusion among citizens of Lesotho and stimulate economic growth for informal markets, SLB has introduced the UNAYO platform, a low-cost, one-stop platform that can be used as a vehicle for growing businesses, providing economic growth for the community and ultimately making individual and collective dreams real.

“As a financial services provider, we are constantly trying to find new ways to deliver our brand promise by enabling business growth and empowering our communities,” rounds off Nicolaisen. “The arrival of UNAYO addresses the need for financial inclusion in our country and has given us the opportunity to increase customer-centricity, by continuing to engage and give impeccable service to all.”