Union Bank of Nigeria Plc. has deployed the Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Solution 12.0; a new core banking application to modernize its infrastructure, improve operating efficiency and customer service delivery.
As one of Nigeria’s top tier lenders with an extensive network of over 320 branches across Nigeria, the bank seeks to better its operations with the new platform to address its corporate, retail and investment banking needs, thereby positioning itself as a highly respected provider of quality banking services in Nigeria.
Mr. Yomi Akinade, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the bank said with the new platform, the bank would be enhancing and standardizing its operations across the country by leveraging on the capabilities of the new technology. “We will have a common operating platform in our extensive network of over 320 branches across Nigeria,” he said.
Mr. Akinade also stated that during the time of the upgrade, customers and the general public may experience some challenges, but measures have been put in place to ensure continuous seamless service delivery in case of disruptions during implementation.
“As you well know, when you go live with a major massive complex project like this, there would be teething issues. So, there are challenges and customers should understand this; but is for their own long term benefit; because we would have a much more superior service offering when the system runs fully,” he added.
He affirmed UBN is trying to bring all of its third party applications up in the earliest possible time, when over 90 percent of those applications would be working.
The Bank says some of challenges being experienced with the current system include the maintenance of multiple servers in branches, constant need for system enhancement when a new field is required on the system. “This usually takes months to resolve,” the bank noted.
Others are income leakage since some charges and new products could not be automated or configured, customer mandate maintained on third party applications instead of the core banking application, and complexity in report generation. Audit trail on maintenance and issue of account replication from the retail to the corporate modules are also some of the challenges with the old version. With the upgrade to the Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Solution 12.0, the bank would have, and enjoy a central server which would be maintained at the head office, “this would also reduce running cost of maintaining multiple servers,” the bank added.
Also, the new application allows users a level of flexibility by introducing User Defined Fields (UDFs), which was prior to this time not defined. “An example is the BVN number, which was recently introduced and now needs to be captured for each customer. The Bank can on its own customise a field for this without having to request for offshore customisations. This will reduce cost; improve time-to-market and product offerings to customers,” UBN disclosed.
A vital feature of the upgraded FLEXCUBE is that the application now has the capability to store customer image and signature. “No withdrawals can be made on an account if no mandate is maintained. This functionality saves the Bank the cost of paying Vendors for maintaining third party applications and check the incident of fraud as no withdrawals can be made on an account if no mandate is maintained,” UBN affirmed.
Other benefits of the Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Solution 12.0 include: developing and customizing reports in-house using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise (OBIE) analytics – which allows the bank generate such reports quickly for management decisions and forecasts. “This will also greatly improve our response time to market demands,” said the lender.
Mr. Akinade further disclosed that the new platform enables the bank to run its end of day in two (2) to three (3) hours; that’s less than half of the time spent in the past doing the same process. “What that means is well before 8:00 am our system is ready for our customers; whereas in the past, we struggle to make the system available to customers,” he added.
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This article was first published on 16th April 2015
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