‘As technology improves, customers are getting savvier,’

One of the many benefits Information and Communications Technology has brought to Nigeria is the marked improvement in banking services. MR. OLAYINKA ONI is Group Head, IT and Operations of Wema Bank Plc. In this interview with JOY BEWAJI he talks about the impact that IT has had on the banking sector, Wema Bank’s strategic positioning in this new wave, and more. Excerpts:

Question: How would you say IT has enhanced banking operations in Nigeria?
Answer: Tremendously, if you had to recall the advert about ‘give me my tally number.’ Compared to what we have today, customers get savvier and their interests are evolving and changing; technology has been the tool that banks are using to catch up and keep in pace the increasing demands and expectations of customers. IT has transformed things in terms of creating efficiencies as they leverage on technology. So with automation we can do things with less number of people; that doesn’t mean you would have to lay off people, but you can channel their efforts into other areas. Customers experience gets better over the years due to leverage on technology. The fact that as a customer today you might not necessarily go to your bank, that is the physical structure, to transact business, you can do anything via virtual or electronic channels through ATM or with your mobile phones or on the internet on laptops. These are the ways technology has transformed banking. In the area of control, before now it would be after the fact, so you get people to go and audit a process. But with automation you can ensure that before you put in some parameters to check or there is some validation before things get done to reduce the amount of errors that could happen during the process.

Does IT help in checking fraudulent acts during banking transactions?
In a way it helps to mitigate, not exactly a foolproof. You can put in access control; that means it wants to check the person wanting to access a solution or application, that way it helps mitigate fraud.

How long has Wema Bank embraced IT?
Since the early 90s. From the first time some form of automation was done, and since then we’ve been deepening our investments and utilisation of technology.

How do we check the issue of poor connectivity in banks?
Technology rides on something called infrastructure which in general terms could mean power, and in Nigeria we have a long way to go in that area. We have come a long way really, but we still have a lot of progress to make. Teledensity is some indices that people use. If you look at penetration and teledensity in Nigeria it’s still a long gap from the 150 million people in the country and there’s just so much coverage that we still need on the telecom side. Those are the problems. Infrastructure is still government led and some is private participation. The only answer today for those occurrences is obviously to build redundancies, so you can have an inverter or multiple of links in a branch. Those are the kinds of redundancies that should be built. It is also a deterrent as it increases operating cost. But sometimes those redundancies might not just be enough, because you might have two links and the two links might be down.

How will the arrival of new submarine cables in West Africa, directly affect IT in banking?
It’s a good thing, but not a direct answer to the particular issues you pointed out like downtime in branches. It would obviously affect immediately internet connectivity, services like internet banking will become more reliable, services around payment space which is ATM will also get value out of that. Services with some form of collaboration will be impacted. But brick and butter services in branches will not immediately get better because submarine cables today speak to internet connectivity, the ones that we can be impacting on those ones will be the telcos making major investment in penetration of fibre connectivity - metro links. But definitely it is a great thing. For the price that I used to pay for a 3 Megabit internet connectivity, for the same price I’ll be able to get a 10 Megabit today. So those are nice developments happening.

What have been your challenges?
It is largely around infrastructure. If the infrastructure is relatively addressed one can channel his focus to more strategic things. One of the biggest things is around power and cooling, and cooling boils down to power. A couple of times, we are bothered about things that should be given and shouldn’t necessarily be an individual problem. Compared to advanced countries, data centre for example, what they would call redundancy is what we call the primary source. For example generator would be redundancy in those places, but here it is our primary source of power. So the challenges are really around infrastructure. Skill is also a challenge; getting good people is also a challenge as there are not enough. And keeping on to good people can also be a challenge.

On the flip side, what do you celebrate as your achievements in IT in the banking sector?
I celebrate my ability to mentor a lot of people. I have groomed people who have gone ahead to occupy senior positions in places. I’m also proud to call myself a turn-around person. I do turn-around jobs where, for example, like the last place I worked – FCMB, I can say categorically that I did a turn-round job where the company had no point of reckoning in the technology space within the banking sector but today I made those major leaps possible.

What are the milestones you’d like to break in the next five years?
Of course, repeat the same success in my job, do another turn-around job. I’m sure when people mention Wema Bank they think of that old back-in-the-days bank; so definitely I have a task to put Wema Bank with the likes of other more accessibly well-known banks as per technology. So that would be a major goal for me. I would also like to grow this business, so it’s not just to deliver technology tools, but grow a brand that people can relate to. In the next five years I would like to make major achievements in grooming leaders in the IT space. I am partnering with a friend within the sector to set up a CIO (Chief Information Officer) forum, and the idea is to groom upcoming people and mentor them.

How much do you think Wema Bank has invested in IT since you’ve been here?
We would have spent a 12-month window which would be a little above a billion. And this would be OPEX and CAPEX, and that is just running things like paying for connectivity, some capital investment etc. For example when I joined we had less than 30-something ATMs; today we have about 100 ATMs. So those are significant progress areas.

How long have you been in Wema Bank?
I joined in November 2009.

In your own niche how do you see Nigeria in the next 10 years?
Technologically, we would have made some significant progress with the pervasiveness of connectivity. The environment will be more conducive for people to be innovative, and do things that could be capital-flight; things that would have been sourced out can be done internally. I think the average individual will find that they can get more service available. There’ll be more convergence available to individuals in their homes. It’ll make life easier. In the next 10 years, the nation could support people working from home; that is all things being equal.