Intellect Design Arena Ltd seeks to expand footprint in Zim
Intellect Design Arena Ltd, a global fintech leader delivering intelligent, composable solutions for banks worldwide, is steadily gaining market share in Zimbabwe. With its eMACH.ai Core Banking Solution having already transformed two of Zimbabwe’s banks, Intellect is setting a new benchmark for banking modernisation in the region. In Zimbabwe, its partnerships with NMB Bank and AFC Commercial Bank have already driven some of the country’s most significant core banking transformations, increasing efficiency, boosting transaction capacity and advancing financial inclusion. We sat down with Mr Rajesh Saxena, chief executive officer of the consumer banking unit of Intellect Design Arena, along with Mr Vishal Singh, senior vice president and regional head of Africa for Intellect, where they highlighted that the company now has four clients in Zimbabwe, with the newest being POSB and First Capital Bank. Below are excerpts of the interview.
Q: Intellect has been working with leading banks in Zimbabwe, including NMB Bank and AFC Bank. Looking back, how would you describe Intellect’s journey in Zimbabwe so far, and what have you learnt from the domestic market?
A: Intellect now serves four clients in Zimbabwe. Besides AFC and NMB, we have recently signed up to do business with POSB, as well as First Capital Bank (FCB). When we look at Zimbabwe, we feel the banks are looking at the solution from a business impact perspective.
AFC Bank has gone through a transformation, and during engaging with their chief executive and the chief finance officer, they were telling us, just as an example, that earlier, their solution used to take about eight hours for end-of-day operations, and after going live with us, those eight hours have become 30 minutes, and now this is a huge business impact that our solution has created. In addition, their ability to launch new products has improved in a competitive market, and earlier it could take months to launch new products. So, from a business impact perspective, we see that the Zimbabwe banks are very keen to understand the business impact of the new technologies that we have created.
The other thing that we have also seen is that when we were talking to many of our prospects and customers, they want agility. For example, at AFC, we were able to deliver the programme on time and within budget.
Q: What is Intellect’s broader vision for Africa, and how do you see markets like Zimbabwe shaping the future of banking in the region?
A: Africa is a large and growing economy with a large population, and when you look at the demographic profile of this continent, most of the people are under 25. About 60 percent of the population in Africa is less than 26 years old or 25 years old; hence, there are demographic dividends, but there are also challenges. One of the challenges is financial inclusion, whereby very few people on this continent have a bank account. In Zimbabwe, the central bank is driving financial inclusion and digital payments. We have the right technology and product set ready for markets like Zimbabwe and, in a broader context, Africa, and we can help these markets achieve their national priorities.
Q: Zimbabwe’s financial landscape has its own unique challenges and opportunities. How is Intellect tailoring its platforms and services to meet the specific needs of banks here?
A: We are already live in two of the banks in Zimbabwe, AFC and NMB; therefore, we have already tailored our solution to suit the Zimbabwe needs.
In order to improve the financial inclusion in the country and support the central Government’s initiative, we are now offering digital onboarding to banks.
Through this, banks can reach the young population and onboard them digitally without visiting the branch. The account is live in a few minutes with minimal paperwork.
Zimbabwe is predominantly a cash economy, so when the banks go digital, whereby the youth can access their money just through a mobile phone, that tendency of relying only on cash tends to little fade away because cash in hand also has a higher risk. With a comprehensive and easy to use digital banking app, banks can enable the citizens to make all payments digitally as well.
Not just this, banks can now offer loans digitally and disburse them in a few minutes. This can significantly help them support the economy of the country.
Q: From your perspective, what are the biggest hurdles banks in Zimbabwe face in their digital transformation journeys? And equally, what excites you most about the opportunities here?
A: The majority of banks in the country are facing challenges due to legacy technology.
As mentioned, end-of-day processing getting reduced to 30 minutes from eight hours and now able to launch new products in days instead of months are game-changers on operational and business front. All this contributes to high efficiency and lower cost of operations.
In addition, there are many regulatory changes in the market, and as the regulatory changes come, your technology systems have to have the ability and capability to manage these changes efficiently and quickly this not only helps the banks to bring the operational cost down but also create a positive quick to market impact. With legacy technology stack it’s very difficult and costly to do so.
One of the biggest downside of running cumbersome complicated technology in banks is the high cost-to-income ratio, which is pretty high as compared to some of their peers in other markets. This is where Intellects eMACH.aienabled platforms come in and support the bank with easy to maintenance and operation, resulting in lower cost of ownership and helping the banks to significantly bring down their cost to income ration on operation front. Therefore, having more efficient, more modern technology will be ideal for banks.
Our offerings are state-of-the-art, secure, comprehensive and easy to evolve. Also Intellect today offers 24*7 support to banks. Our teams are strategically based in Africa, understand the regional and cultural nuances and are able to provide a much more personalised support than anyone else in the market. This is above the fact that our solutions are much easier maintain for the banks hence resulting in minimum dependence on Intellect.
Q: Can you share the key innovations Intellect is investing in, and how these will redefine banking for customers and regulators alike?
A: What we have brought to the Zimbabwe market is our latest technology; hence, there are many banks who are keen to adopt our system. We call it eMACH.ai and it is the latest generation architecture where E stands for events, M stands for microservices, A stands for API, C stands for cloud, H means headless and all offerings are powered by AI. That means we can either give it to you with a head (user experience layer) or without a head and embedded with AI. This is the latest solution that we are bringing in most of the markets, including the Zimbabwe market.
This solution architecture is going to last them for 15 years and allows banks to integrate very seamlessly with ecosystem players as well as the banks themselves, who can extend and compose products. With our suite of offerings, banks have already seen real and positive business impact.
Q: Sustainable transformation often comes through collaboration. Are there existing or upcoming partnerships with local players—whether banks, fintechs, or government—that you’d like to highlight?
A: We work extensively in Africa with central banks. Our solution made for central banks called eMACH.ai Quantum is currently live in central banks in Mauritania, Ethiopia, Seychelles, Lesotho and in advance implementation stage in Mauritius, Madagascar and Mozambique. Outside Africa, Central Bank of India (RBI), Indonesia, and Sweden are also using eMACH.ai Quantum. We are keen to showcase our solution to other central banks in Africa including Zimbabwe. We are in touch with many banks, and we hope that in the next couple of years we will be able to grow our footprint in this market based on the work and the technology that we bring. From a local collaboration perspective, other than the clients that we have, we also have a local partner that acts as our logistical support. The whole idea is to not only keep the knowledge within Intellect or within the banks but also to recruit the local population, the youth of Zimbabwe, and train them in this technology.
Q: You’ve led Intellect through expansion across several continents. What personal experiences or insights have most influenced the way you approach leadership and innovation in financial technology?
A: One of the most important learnings for us has been witnessing the power of design thinking. Design thinking with customer centricity is the heart of our working style. We apply design thinking in all our internal and external operations. We have seen its positive impact in our client’s implementations as well as it has helped us put the customer at the centre.
The second thing, which is kind of a DNA of our company, is investing and building long-term relationships with our clients. When you look at a relationship, it should be a win-win attitude for both parties over a long period of time. Based on this principle today across Africa we have great relationships with all our clients. As an example, with Exim Bank Tanzania, we have had a relationship for more than 10 years. Another example can be Citi bank with whom we have been associated for 35 years now.
The third guiding principle is about business impact to our clients, like we talked about with the AFC and NMB example of how they are now able to launch new products quickly.
The fourth guiding principle is really about purpose. We have spent a lot of research on AI over the last many years, and matured it. Our AI platform called Purple Fabric is a game changer proposition for banks.
During this visit, we had a master class on Buisness impact of AI in Zimbabwe led by our expert from Bombay, India, and we had 60 top bankers from the Zimbabwe banking industry come and join this AI master class. The purpose was not to sell anything but to make sure that the banking industry in Zimbabwe understands what is happening from a banking perspective in AI and how they can leverage some of these things. So, this is what I call a purpose-driven organisation.
These are the four things I would say: design thinking, building long-term relationships, creating business impact and having a purpose-driven organisation.
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