FNB CEO, Jacques Celliers
2020 saw further gains for SA’s Best Digital Bank, FNB, who continues to see increased adoption of their market-leading digital platforms.
FNB, recently awarded top honours for both the mobile Banking App as well as the Internet Banking categories by SITEisfaction, an annual survey that assesses how happy users are with their bank, is benefiting from the wave of organizations and individuals that are moving their financial interactions online. After a record number of innovations over the last decade and again in 2020 the bank is further increasing its focus and investments on technology and data platforms to further expand the tools and services it provides to assist customers to thrive. Longstanding FNB customers are very familiar with the simplicity, security, and holistic nature of FNB’s rewarding offerings.
SITEisfaction has been conducting independent surveys of banking customers for almost a decade. Its assessments, based on feedback from real consumers, has consistently recognized FNB’s efforts since the survey’s inception. That’s not surprising, considering FNB pioneered digital banking in South Africa, and today offers the most comprehensive suite of financial services to personal and business users via intuitive platforms that cover so much more than merely banking.
FNB’s Internet Banking and Banking App act as modern data driven ‘contextual control panels’ to our market-leading offerings across Insurance, Investments, Credit, Payments, Connectivity and Loyalty categories, allowing our customers, across Personal and Business Segments, to take control of their finances, 24x7x365 from anywhere. These control panels are also configured to assist our employees to better support our customers where personal assistance is needed either remotely or in person in any of our physical environments such as branches & suites.
FNB empowers its users like no other bank can. Consider, for instance, our payments portal. In addition to the intuitive inter-account, domestic and cross-border payment options you’d expect, there’s FNB Pay, which leverages NFC technology in smartphones to allow customers to pay with a tap of their phone. There’s also Scan to Pay, which leverages QR codes – now available to FNB Business clients for payment receipt; Pay2Cell, which enables payments to any FNB user with only their cellphone number; GeoPay, which relies on user locations; and eWallet, which allows customers to send money to people who don’t even bank with us or card-less cash withdrawal capabilities.
When it comes to insurance customers can now take out our full range of Life insurance and Funeral benefits on the app. Monitoring policies, submitting and tracking claims etc are all now enabled on the control panel and the ease of use is especially useful during disruptive periods.
Then there’s the nav>> suite of service, a fintech offering supporting our customers with property, vehicle, money and other day-to-day matters. nav>>Home makes it possible to view properties, get valuations on existing properties and apply for finance. Home Services connect local SME’s and pre-vetted tradesmen with homeowners in need for safe, trusted seamless service and payments. Meanwhile, nav>>Car lets users pay traffic fines and renew vehicle license discs from within the app. We’re especially proud of nav>>Money, which allows our customers to track their spending, do budgeting, and check their credit score.
Of course, none of these matter without security, and there again, we’re proud of our position as the industry leader. Our newly launched Security Centre on the app consolidates information on how to protect yourself and your business against financial fraud, the latest modus operandi of fraudsters, and guides customers through their recourse if they believe their accounts have been compromised. We’re also at the vanguard when it comes to harnessing machine learning and artificial intelligence to proactively identify and block fraudulent transactions before they happen. The real-time straight through processes allow customers to manage any risk or vulnerability 24x7x365.
We also believe it’s important to reward our customers, and to help them make informed financial decisions. Our eBucks rewards initiative, which this year turned 20 years old, remains the market’s leading gamification program.
Again, the platforms are configured to assist customers to engage and improve access to earning and spending benefits with up to 40% in discounts for example on a range of household-name retailers, flights, etc or to benefit from the R4 per litre they can get back on fuel purchased at Engen service stations.
These are just some of the examples of our efforts to help our customers thrive into the future as we further modernise and transition into our platform aspirations. We’ve spent more than a decade building significant and diverse data, technology and engineering teams who are constantly working to anticipate the digital demands our customers place on us now, and in the future. Thanks to the deep levels of talent across these experienced multi-disciplinary teams we are able to respond to these ever-increasing needs given a multi-year investment in reconfiguring and modernising of our primary line of business systems, networks, data and technology related infrastructure.
The proactive approach, leveraging emerging technologies, is something we’re constantly looking to refine, and customers can look forward to further enhancements to services like support chatbots for common queries and customised in-app offerings based on their unique requirements, profiles, and respective stages of their financial journeys.
Our customers are discerning and demanding, and we appreciate it, because along with growing competition in the market, it motivates us to continually innovate, deliver helpful solutions and strive for excellence.
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