Using a feature-rich platform, BRAC Bank brings security, control, and convenience to its customers while ensuring customer growth and increased digital banking adoption.
– IBS Intelligence

Using a feature-rich platform, BRAC Bank brings security, control, and convenience to its customers while ensuring customer growth and increased digital banking adoption.

As part of its National ICT Policy and ICT Act of 2009, the Bangladeshi government had committed to using technology to combat poverty through its Digital Bangladesh — Vision 2021 plan.

This digitisation ambition got a major push during the lockdown post the pandemic as customers socially distanced in their homes and preferred using digital wallets, contactless payments, and mobile apps for their financial transactions.

This presented a huge opportunity for financial institutions to embrace the benefits of digital banking and provide their consumers with the freedom to bank, transact, and move money as they choose.

BRAC Bank, a private commercial bank in Bangladesh offering SME, retail and wholesale banking, cards, foreign exchange & related services, wished to embark upon a digital transformation exercise to overhaul its entire digital banking infrastructure and upgrade its internet and mobile channels.

Clayfin Technologies, a Digital Channels Experience provider with over two decades of experience in the industry, having completed about 80 implementations across multiple countries in the MEA and APAC regions, was selected by BRAC Bank to implement an integrated omnichannel retail banking solution to deliver a modern and cross-platform customer experience.

Project and Solution Overview

BRAC Bank was using an existing digital banking infrastructure developed in-house but wished to enhance its offering by improving its integration capabilities to accommodate dynamic requirements.

Further, the bank wanted to contribute towards helping the environment by reducing the need for customers to commute and visit physical branches. Additionally, the bank sought a partner for this endeavour, rather than just a vendor.

The solution was implemented in a manner that facilitated dynamic modifications. A few features of the highly configurable solution are:

• Options for both self-onboarding and onboarding through the bank
• Various types of authentication options for different scenarios
• Integration with digital wallets
• Provision of value-added services such as QR code payments and mobile recharge options

Implementation Process

Clayfin and BRAC Bank decided to adopt an agile methodology with short sprint cycles to handle the project. A core Project Management Office (PMO) was created, consisting of program managers, business analysts, business user groups, technical leads, quality assurance leads, and UI/UX specialists on both sides.

The PMO was tasked with monitoring progress, resolving issues, and ensuring that project objectives were met within timelines. Senior management involvement from both sides constituted a Steering Committee that took stock of progress weekly and helped overcome challenges during the implementation stage.

The project was run with deliverables being split across multiple sprint cycles and quality assurance being embedded from the development stage. There was a spirit of cohesion and partnership, where Clayfin performed as an extension of BRAC and not as a vendor. Also worth noting is that the entire project was executed during the global lockdown due to COVID-19.

Clayfin organised user experience sessions with the bank to finalise the UX grammar. Focused user groups were created to test the UX approach, and feedback from these groups was included in the final design grammar. Implementing functionalities such as QR code-based payments, a three-click design approach, and reduced application response time significantly helped enhance the user experience.

Daily calls were conducted to prevent slip-ups in the process. Modern tools were introduced, with Appium being used for regression testing of the mobile app, Selenium for regular application testing, Maven as a build tool, Jenkins for the CI/CD process, Git for source code repository and BURP for security testing of the application. These tools ensured a high level of control, visibility, transparency, and reliability.

Challenges

As in any large-scale transformational project, there were complexities with handling multiple external partners, connectivity with numerous systems, diversity in technological architecture, protocols etc. At the same time, with channel applications providing last-mile service delivery and reconciliations to customers, they became the face of the bank and front end of various applications. Hence, it became critical that integrations with back-office systems provided a seamless and unified experience. Further challenges faced were:

Dynamic nature of requirements (such as UX changes) viz. deviations and changing client expectations

Extensive storyboarding during the pandemic

These challenges were overcome by close collaboration with BRAC Bank throughout the implementation process, which helped prioritise tasks and oversee an early transition to remote working, which proved to be an excellent foresight.

Benefits Achieved

BRAC Bank’s channel offering was named “Astha” and was launched to the public in early 2021. Since the launch, the mobile application has become the No. 1 banking app in Bangladesh. With an extensive list of features, such as self-registration, intuitive dashboards, account information, bill payments, wallet transfers, international remittances, credit card management, and QR code payments, the app quickly managed to become popular with the bank’s customers. The internet banking portal, which provided a similar list of features, was also utilised extensively.

The key benefits that the bank achieved were:

•  More than 100,000 downloads
• Consistent ratings of 4.4 and above in the Google Play Store
• 30% customer growth in less than a year
• 100% growth in digital transaction numbers and volumes
• 36% shift from manual transactions to digital channels

Customers experienced a significant impact on their self-care abilities – they could update their profile, contact details, and KYC details, as well as log and manage service requests.

From a back-office efficiency perspective, Clayfin’s Dynamic Biller configuration capability enabled customers to configure billers on the go and ensured reduced dependency on Clayfin in biller onboarding, thereby improving their ROI.

Conclusion

Clayfin enabled a human-centric design approach, which ensured the app was simple and intuitive, and provided a great user experience, both in terms of functionality and navigation. Additionally, Clayfin planned to implement more features such as chatbot integration, Personal Finance Management module, Data Analytics capabilities etc., at BRAC Bank making it a market leader in digital banking in Bangladesh.

In this way, BRAC Bank provided convenience and value to its customers during an especially difficult time and was able to drive digital banking adoption to help accelerate mobile financial services in Bangladesh during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting financial inclusion in the country.

“In Clayfin, we found a partner who was willing to walk the extra mile with us. Their adaptability contributed massively to this implementation, through which we will now be able to scale faster and continue to provide tangible value to our customers.” – Sabbir Hossain, Chief Operating Officer, BRAC Bank, Bangladesh

Key Facts

Supplier: Clayfin
Headquarters: India
Founded: 2000
Client: BRAC Bank
Solution: Clayfin Digital Banking
Timeline: 5 months with go-live in April 2021