By Epizitone Anabi Ebodume
Banking is no more safe boxing of money and extending loans. Maximizing transaction speed and minimizing timing have become all new parameters for modern banking. This means that banking is lot more than numbers. Cash in wallet is becoming very insignificant to customers' overall transactions in most of the west because less than a tenth of the people use debit and or credit cards for their transactions. With recent advances in Banking services, anyone can benefit from a host of banking products ranging from opening normal daily transaction accounts to saving and deposit accounts, as well as trading accounts with commercially supposed banks. The uniqueness of these accounts are just that, they are simple account structures like you find in Cameroon, but rather their operation and gadgets attached to it varies.
The industry in the west has sufficiently minimized customer waiting time on the counters by installing multiple points of teller machines where customers can immediately be served on various aspects including withdrawals but not limited to withdrawals. Customers can equally get a brief statement of accounts and of course transfer money from one account to another using the teller machine. In some of these teller machines you can also save directly to your account such as in SEB bank-Sweden.
Internet is fully integrated in banking activities such that customers can basically get minute by minute updates of their account transactions as well as communicate inside their accounts, directly through emails with their banks. What is so amazing with all this internet magic is that, a well literate customer does not need to ever stand in front of any bank counter for any services including paying of bills, granted that internet banking fully handles that. Meantime, customers without better understanding of the internet of banking will be just ready to pay an extra fees when requiring a front desk bank employee to render any service which otherwise could be done directly through the internet, that includes bills payment or retrieving some information you could be expected to have easily by logging into your account in the internet.
Internet (IT driven) is like a composite for the bank and the customers, such a marriage that is accepted if you must do banking in larger Scandinavia and most of develop western countries. Just everything revolve around the power of information technology (IT) and as a prerequisite, banks are constantly shopping for the latest software the market can offer. Let me point out that this is one of the tenets of stiff competitions and cooperation amongst different banks; how fast a bank can insulate the latest market technology.
Again if we for a moment visit the extent to which IT inclusion has created value in this sector, we can easily cite the cases where almost all supermarkets/retail businesses and not just that, but an entire economy interwoven with payments channeling somehow directly to the banking system through debit and credit cards for which every account holder should own one. One great area of innovation with all these is the number of retail outlets that have set up private bank-cash-management schemes, given their own debit/credit cards to customers and roughly allocating credit, but unlike banks, their cards are used just for shopping in this particular brand of shop.
Bank automation revisited
One key area is optimization of bank output and reduction of employment cost. Some major bank branches have been shut down, yet banking services are still optimally provided by automation such as teller machines. It suffices to have a debit/credit card and stay hundred of miles from the nearest bank branch. A study has revealed that in Sweden, bank automation has help to increase bank resource utilization and branch output optimized as existing bank branches can efficiently and effectively handled more clients with very few staffs than before bank automation.
This remains a cutting edge technology fully accepted in most of western bank landscape, and also an area that has quickly replicated everywhere compared to the few stops of teller machines and internet driven transactions we can fine in most African countries. There exist efficient linkage both interbank and customer to bank relationship through this installed automation. I want to emphasize this because it is apparently why the banking system is evolving faster in the west, than might be the case in afro banking. Feedbacks are easily gathered and data are immediately analyzed to provide complete 24 on 24 banking services.....(To be Continued) © The Entrepreneur Newspaper 2010. All Rights Reserved . Follow The Entrepreneur News on Twitter. See Our Events in Face Book.
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