Afcacia

Experts are betting on banks and fintechs to drop competition in favour of collaborations as they move away from legacy banking operations into disruptive digital platforms.

The pointers of the things to come in the banking world were evident at the seventh edition of Connected Banking Summit themed ‘Accelerating Digital Inclusion and Sustainable Transformation’.

The forum provides an opportunity for financial sector players to explore and deliberate ways of building future-oriented banking models that are responsive to the changing needs of customers without compromising on security and privacy.

“Banks are partnering with fintechs to meet speed and agility and this collaboration has to continue into the future,” said Winnie Syowai Onyancha, senior transaction banking manager at KCB Group.

“Fintechs cannot be seen as competitors who are eating into the income of banks.”

As banks seek to tap the rapid shift to the digital financial space, customers are increasingly embracing digital channels such as mobile and internet banking which offers services at the comfort of one’s living room.

Speakers at the Connected summit underlines the need for banks and fintechs to jointly develop homegrown solutions that can strike a balance between convenience, security and privacy.

“Most of the developments we see are foreign-based so we would like to urge the sector to look at local solutions for local issues through research and development,” said Timothy Were, the deputy director of ICT at the ministry of ICT and digital economy.

“There has been a public outcry of people losing money through online scams, insider malpractices and collusion with telcos operators. That whole ecosystem needs to be looked at.”

Director of information technology at Safaricom, George Njuguna noted that the experience with M-Pesa ‘super app’ shows collaborations hold the key to cutting costs, increasing convenience and solving challenges such as cyber security.

“We are already collaborating with banks on some initiatives but we want to take this further in helping to solve some of the digitization issues like cybersecurity by levering on our cyber defence centre,” stated Mr Njuguna.