By Akoma Chinweoke

Determined to help banks craft a cost-reduction and banking efficiency strategies stakeholders in the nation’s banking sector has said collaborative effort is the only way to improve service delivery to  customers without compromising their ability to grow revenue as the economic outlook improves

Disclosing this at a roundtable organised by KPMG in conjunction with the CIO Nexus, a forum of Chief Information Officers (CIOs),the group noted that today’s economic climate creates a dilemma for banks and stressed the need for collaboration in technology application so as to reduce costs and improve efficiency urgently.

According Mr, Boye Ademola,  an associate director,  KPMG “for regulation to be effective, both CBN and NCC must collaborate and understand the fact that they are inter-independent .

The GPRS services today is a bit unstable and it is provided by the telecommunication companies regulated by the NCC but i used by banks for providing point of sales (POS) services to customers but the banks don’t have any say over GPRS connections.

“There are efforts to bring some legislation in Nigeria on electronic banking and we hope that some of the recommendations that have come out of the CIO roundtable would also provide guidance to those that are casting the document on electronic banking.” he said

The 2010 edition of the roundtable which is focussed on the challenges in the banking industry with respect to customer satisfaction and the changing role of CIO sought to, among others, determine the state of technology in the banking industry, decipher the impact of technology on customer-satisfaction, identify the critical areas of customer service where technology could assist, provide a forum for CIOs to share insights and collective experiences, shed light on the evolving role of technology in the industry, highlighting key trends and developments.

The roundtable session which was well attended by the stakeholders in the sector also identified areas to achieve customer delight through technology to include,project management capabilities, channel infrastructure availability core banking application support for banking products and enterprise-wide Business intelligence capabilities

The Nigerian banking industry is in a period of rapid and increasing change which has been sparked off on the one hand by the recent banking industry reforms instituted by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), and on the other hand by external global/ macro-economic pressures; an outcome of the world-wide financial crises.

On an annual basis, KPMG performs a Customer Satisfaction Survey which delves into the psyche of bank customers to determine the differentiators amongst banks in customer service capabilities. The 2010 survey findings revealed scope for improvement across customer touch-points to attain customer’s delight.