BUSINESS REPORTER
Steward Bank, the largest bank by customer base, is this weekend undertaking a major system upgrade as it moves to offer more products to customers on a more secure platform, an executive has said.
The upgrade is biggest since the acquisition of the the former TN Bank in 2013.
The Cassava Smartech-owned bank is upgrading its Temenos T24 core banking system to the R19 version, the latest version of the banking system on the market.
Steward Bank CEO, Courage Mashavave, said the new platform had much greater capacity and was faster compared to the bank’s old system.
The new platform is much more secure
and scalable in ways that will give the bank more flexibility and improve the customer experience, he said
“We are excited to be finally cutting over to our new system this weekend. We are confident the new system, which is the latest version on the market, will vastly improve the customer experience in that it is significantly faster and a lot more robust and stable than the old version,” Mashavave said.
“Because the new system is scalable and flexible, it will enable us to offer more products and services to more customers on a very secure and modern banking platform.”
He said the project was the largest technology investment that Cassava Smartech Zimbabwe, the bank’s holding company, had made in the bank to date.
Mashavave noted that it had taken close to a year to complete the project.
With 1.2m customers, Steward Bank is the largest bank in Zimbabwe by customer base.
The new system is set to make the bank more competitive and position it to deliver greater value to its stakeholders.
The bank is integrated to EcoCash, the largest mobile money platform in the country, as well as to Zimswitch, the payments switch.
Steward Bank’s digital drive has cemented its position as a champion for financial inclusion placing the financial institution at the forefront of making banking services accessible to Zimbabweans.
The upgrade, which is set to be effected over the low-traffic Easter holidays, comes soon after the bank revamped its Square App to version 2.1 and re-launched its Visa Globetrotter mobile App.
The bank has also upgraded its online banking portal as part of its all-round service upgrade.
