Ecobank Transactional Inc. (Ecobank), is a pan-African conglomerate with banking operations in 36 African countries. Incorporated in 1985, the bank provides wholesale, retail, investment, and transactional banking services to governments, financial institutions, multinationals, local companies, SMEs, and individuals.

In the face of changing banking requirements for managing both individuals and corporates across Africa and globally, the need for extensibility of banking systems leveraging financial technology capabilities to support these complexities in corporate finance and cash management is growing rapidly.

Ecobank is well-positioned to meet this need and has, over the years, consistently fulfilled this role with its wide range of world-class, innovative, tested, and adaptable banking solutions with astute professionals offering the best of financial advice.

The bank continues to win and implement many multi-country innovative cash management mandates, leveraging its strong pan-African branch network and electronic banking platforms such as Omni Plus (the bank’s proprietary integrated electronic banking platform) and SWIFT for Corporates whilst also building customer-centric solutions. Ecobank has built numerous tailor-made solutions via its banking platform, acquiring solutions through social media, Host-to-Host, or SWIFT-based customer integrations. These sophisticated platforms have enabled Ecobank to gain significant traction with key customers, recognition, and growing market acceptance.

Project Scope: Implementing a cash management platform serving all payment schemes

EcoBank wanted to make banking convenient for ITS clients by enabling them to see all their corporate accounts in a single dashboard and perform all their financial transactions electronically. The project aimed at establishing a single platform for payments that would help improve the bank’s ability to compete internationally with other banks and pave the way for the development of innovative digital banking solutions.

Implementing a centralised cash management platform would also help Ecobank to automate manual transactions through new electronic channels, which, in turn, would greatly improve processing efficiency and reduce operational costs.

Ecobank focused on building solutions that were sufficiently flexible to accommodate all the varying local business practices applied in the different countries where the bank has a presence, yet also support high-volume of transactions across the bank’s network.

Implementation Process: Fast-tracked implementation and enhanced customer experience

To provide efficient, seamless, effective, robust, and less costly cash management solutions to its customers and leverage the latest cutting-edge technology, Ecobank embarked on a journey to upgrade its core banking application to a more robust and scalable version. The project was successfully executed in just 21 months across the entire Ecobank Group. Ecobank has also launched a new version of its integrated electronic banking platform and revamped its e-commerce systems. These platforms were updated taking into consideration all the feedback received from the bank’s corporate customers, regional merchants, and internal stakeholders in the last few years to offer a much-improved solution that can meet both immediate customers’ requirements and those in the future. The customer experience and journey on the new platform is much better and is being updated across the board, including improvements to the look and feel, navigation, to onboarding, product offering, and functionalities.

Ecobank’s key offerings include:

• Humanitarian Cash / Mobile Wallet Disbursement- Ecobank Voucher Pay
• Ecobank’s Payments Solution
• Ecobank Omni Plus & Omni Lite (Integrated Electronic Banking Platform)
• Host-to-Host
• SWIFT for Corporates
• Alliance Payments
• Ecobank Pay

The bank’s cash management solutions have been implemented to address specific customer needs, including an integrated and centralised payment network for PSPs, MSBs, and Aggregators.

The significance of Ecobank’s extensive pan-African network as a financial institution cannot be over-emphasised. Because the bank has an integrated cash management solution capability, most PSP and Money Service Bureaus are now working with Ecobank to deliver payments to beneficiaries across the bank’s network. An emerging trend that has gained traction is cross-border payments networks wanting to leverage Ecobank’s integrated and centralised network to deliver payment from other continents into Africa. Significant progress has been made with a major cross-border payments network, largely remitting monies from the US and Europe and now into Africa through Ecobank.

Challenges: Cross-border payments regulations and pandemic hampered development activities

Banks and other financial institutions, while managing customer expectations, face challenges around local and cross-border regulations in building a sustainable and scalable infrastructure. This has been further exacerbated by the current disruptive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, although many organisations, like Ecobank, had commenced their digital transformation journey before the pandemic.

Benefits: Business growth and a significant increase in revenue

With the various payment solutions and capabilities that Ecobank has implemented and rolled out in the last 6 years, the bank has seen tremendous business growth and opportunities. The bank posted more than 40% year-on-year growth in solution uptake, especially on its integrated electronic banking system (Omni Plus). The yearly transaction value on this platform rose from $4.6 billion in 2014 to almost $16.0 billion at the end of 2018.

Conclusion

The bank has seen a significant increase in opportunities with international organisations (including a number of UN Agencies and the like). They continue to make payments across multiple countries in Africa, especially countries where they provide aid and support. With the bank’s extended network, coupled with flexible and robust cash management solutions and capabilities, Ecobank has been the bank of choice to support these organisations in achieving their objectives and goals.

Key Facts

Bank: EcoBank
Headquarters: Togo, Africa
Founded: 1985
Supplier: Internal
Solution Implemented: Core banking application upgrade.