‘Digitalisation vital to serve bank customers’

DIGITAL and financial literacy training is important for banks to reach many customers in the country, says Bank South Pacific (BSP) chief executive officer Robin Fleming.
Fleming said this would help educate people on the different innovations that were used in the banking system and also promote financial inclusion for everyone in society.
“Financial and digital literacy education will certainly leverage digital applications to educate the unbanked and enable financial inclusion for the unbanked to access financial services,” he said.
“BSP understands that increasing digitalisation is crucial to be able to serve a customer base that is rapidly adopting digital technology.
“There are many positives with digital technology and banking and the most important of which is to be able to carry out financial transactions at the time and location of your choice.
“ICT (information and communication technology) and digitalisation aspects are meant to lower costs and improve efficiency as well as enhance new business models.
“This is a volumes-based business, however, and volumes can only increase as more people participate in the formal banking sector.”
“From a banking perspective and applicable to all businesses, today’s challenges in PNG ICT infrastructure is having communication links with bandwidth capacity to sustain 24 hours of operation of banking system, and this continues to be a challenge albeit there has been improvement.
“There has been a lot more focus in recent months since Apec to address infrastructure and capacity issues and the projects in progress will address the existing challenges to develop and improve capacity.
“The impact should be beneficial for the entire economy as the bank will be able to reach rural communities and provide reliable online banking services that will save money and costs for customers to travel to a branch in towns.”
Fleming said he was also proud to see more women take a central role in the digital aspects of the bank’s plans with Nuni Kulu appointed as BSP’s digital general manager at the beginning of this year.
She is supported by senior officers Roberta Morlin and Belinda Manning – an all-female senior leadership group within BSP.