StanChart to start tablet-based banking

Standard Chartered will roll out “tablet banking” in Bangladesh this month as part of its efforts to reach out to clients digitally and giving them more convenience, said a top official.

In tablet banking, a bank equips its staffers with tablet-based sales and service tools and sends them to customers' doorsteps.

“Digitisation is inevitable. It is the way everybody wants to work and it is the way we all are changing our lives,” said Karen Fawcett, chief executive of retail banking for Standard Chartered.

“Our plan is to bring Bangladesh up to the global standards in terms of digitisation,” she told The Daily Star in an interview in Dhaka last week.

The London-based bank first launched its tablet banking, which is termed as the next big thing in the banking sector globally, in South Korea in 2014, using various types of databases such as social security numbers and taxation the country has in place.

The tablet-based sales and service platform allows bank staff to provide a banking experience at a customer's environment. It operates over a secure internet connection which does not require physical connections, and thus enables a flexible branch layout design.

This enables paperless processes such as customer account opening or loan applications in a wireless environment, aiding what increasingly matters to banks -- close customer-proximity banking that increases process efficiency and ultimately improves customer service and bottom line performance.

In tablet banking, the bank's salespersons take photos of national identification cards of prospective clients and that information goes straight into the government database for verification. In this process, an account opens within five minutes.

“If we can get connected with the same national database in Bangladesh and bring our latest technology, the service level to the clients will go up enormously,” said Fawcett.

Standard Chartered Bangladesh (SCB) has already received permission for using the NID, and hopes to fully leverage this opportunity for making its operations more efficient.

“Tablet banking will be completely paperless,” said Aditya Mandloi, head of retail banking for SCB.

For making credit cards available for prospective clients, salespersons of SCB will visit prospective clients, note down everything on tablets, take photos of the documents and walk away without taking any documents.

“You will get your credit cards a few days later,” said Mandloi.

Fawcett said the bank is re-launching its online banking and mobile platform later in the year.

“That's a very important initiative. We are also expanding our ATM network.”

She said the opportunities for countries such as Bangladesh to adopt all these technologies will improve services to clients enormously. The convenience factor is very exciting and will bring down the cost of doing business.

She said developed nations have digitised their banking systems to lower the cost of doing business.

Bangladesh is the eighth largest market for Standard Chartered and an old client, stretching back to 1905.

“Bangladesh is an incredibly important business for us. It is one of the businesses we are very proud of. We have a broad set of clients for a long period. It is the business we are looking to invest in and grow,” said Fawcett.

She said the bank is investing heavily across the world in wholesale and retail business to make sure that it can bring the clients better services.

Fawcett, 53, said many people own smartphones and tablets with internet connections and the bank would try to make life easier for customers.

Fawcett is aware of the risks of cyber attacks like the ones Bangladesh Bank faced in February, saying they have put in place state-of-the-art firewalls and security systems.

The bank is also shifting towards chip cards from magnetic stripe-based cards within April to make sure the system is more secure.

Standard Chartered has operations in 70 countries mainly in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and plans to expand footprint in the markets, because of the growth opportunity in the regions and immense trade flows. 

In Bangladesh, the bank will continue to remain very visible in the retail segment. Bangladesh is one of the major markets for the bank and is in the process of tripling the amount of investment in the retail segment. 

“We are going to invest heavily in the digital side of the business,” said Fawcett, adding that the bank spends $100 million a year on the digitisation process globally.

The retail banking operation is launching a number of new products and upgrading the credit card capabilities.

SCB now has 26 branches and 88 ATMs across the country. It plans to increase the number of ATMs by 20 percent this year.

Mandloi said the bank would focus on mobile financial services in the rest of the year or early next year. The bank will work with established players in the mobile payment space rather than creating a new one.

About the model on mobile payment system, Fawcett said there are examples of telecom and other technology companies who are coming in the payment space. “Different countries have different models. It has not yet settled on one model.” 

Retail banking contributes 30 percent to the overall revenue of Standard Chartered globally.

Fawcett, who earned her MBA from INSEAD and her MA in economics from the University of Cambridge, said the bank is investing in the areas of retail and private banking, in people, new products, systems, cyber security and anti-money laundering.