Staff Reporter
Windhoek-A bank that enables you to open an account without coming into a branch – that is the latest innovative convenience that Nedbank Namibia offers clients.
Nedbank makes the process of digital on-boarding (applying for an account online) available through their website. The process enables clients to select the relevant type of account that appeals to them and fill in all the required fields online.
Once all fields are completed and the application has been submitted, a Nedbank Customer Contact Centre consultant will process the application via a telephonic engagement with the client, which literally takes a fraction of the time it would have taken to come into a branch.
Another positive is that you can do it from your laptop, tablet or smartphone, 24 hours of the day any day of the week. Once the application is processed, the client is required to collect their transactional card at their chosen branch during branch hours, accompanied by the relevant documentation for verification and record-keeping purposes.
This also ensures that Nedbank complies with all Financial Intelligence Act (FIA) and Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. “Customer expectations have changed,” says Mario Poolman, a marketing manager at Nedbank.
“Modern customers are exposed to innovative platforms all the time and have come to expect convenience from all their service engagements. As banks we need to catch up. While talking to our customers none of them said they wanted to spend more time in a branch; so we invested our energy in developing a journey for them where they didn’t have to.
“We are expanding on the process and in some aspects it can still be improved, but we have already significantly reduced branch time to a fraction of what it used to be through the process. We are using our customer feedback of the experience to inform improvements to the process, essentially co-creating the experience with the market as we go.”
Benjamin Fourie, Nedbank head of distribution adds, “The digital revolution is part of the Nedbank journey to enhance our customer experience. The new processes have great potential for business development through cross-selling and up-selling techniques, and above all for increasing customer loyalty by implementing a customer journey design that’s attractive and comfortable. Online applications are only the beginning, we are investigating a host of opportunities to innovate and bring convenience to our clients.”
Nedbank’s online applications have been positively accepted by the market, with significant and growing numbers of new accounts routing through this new innovative channel since its inception earlier this year.
“The success of the platform demonstrates that our market is ready for digital innovation in service delivery and more specifically in sectors that are traditionally, and sometimes stubbornly, bricks and mortar focused, like the banking space,” says Poolman.