Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 01 | Page 69

INDUSTRY WATCH of the day will meet their needs and will provide exactly what they require. Whether it means doing it directly or partnering with other firms becomes almost irrelevant to the customer, because the bank becomes the single trusted entity. The bank continues to own and maintain the relationship and to provide the customer what is best suited for their needs.” Across most of North Africa, banks cannot afford to address large populations of underbanked and unbanked potential customers by continuously expanding the number of branch offices. They have to look at telecom service providers and other Fintech partners as a means of lowering the cost base to address this large untapped population. The biggest competition for banks is the cash transactions that they do not manage from underbanked and unbanked populations, which are completed outside their banking systems. The best way for banks in North Africa to bring those cash transactions from underbanked and unbanked populations into their financial systems is through partnering with those entities that do manage those cash transactions. www.intelligentcio.com Lutfi Zakhour, Senior Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton MENA. • You really have to think about the customer and their everyday life • How can you offer solutions that will not greatly disrupt their way of life • You need to look at different partners that already interact and interface with customers • Each one involved in the partnership knows what value proposition they bring to the customer • They can offer it on a joint basis without having the customer change their way of life INTELLIGENTCIO 69