Track: Industry 4.0 in African Context

Abstract

The South African banking market has been largely dominated by the big four traditional banks i.e. FNB, ABSA, Standard Bank and Nedbank, prior to the implementation of digital banks. The introduction of these new entrants has meant the domination is starting to cease as many of the consumer and small & medium enterprise companies that banked with traditional banks are migrating to these entrants. This is because of the affordable pricing options and contextual solutions they offer, which are enabled through the use industry 4.0 technologies. With this in mind, a qualitative study was conducted to unpack what the commercial segment of a particular bank, Bank A, can do to bridge the digital divide opened by digital banks. The study concluded that Bank A should accelerate the adoption of industry 4.0 technologies to drive operational efficiencies and cost reduction, optimize business processes, apply agile project delivery methodologies to market solutions quicker than their competitors. This could be achieved by implementing a hybrid core banking application to enable the bank to adopt a progressive modernization strategy by using the best of legacy core system coupled with the new core banking application, and collaborating with fintech companies to drive contextual solution delivery.