Steward Bank in major banking system upgrade

Steward Bank, the largest bank by customer base, is this weekend undertaking its biggest system upgrade since its acquisition from 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.

The migration to the new banking platform follows months of work in the background in which the bank, a leader in digital financial services, has been working with the technical partner and system vendor to deliver the new platform.

Steward Bank CEO, Mr Courage Mashavave, said compared to the bank's old system, the new platform had much greater capacity and was faster. He said it was much more secure and scalable in ways that will give the bank more flexibility and improve the customer experience.

"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.

"Because the new system it 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," Mr Mashavave said.

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. He noted that it had taken close to a year to complete the project, but it was well worth it because of the benefits the bank's clients stood to reap from the use of the new platform.

Steward Bank, which has 2.1 million customers, is the largest in Zimbabwe by customer base, and one of the most innovative and fastest growing financial institutions in the country. 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, at the fore of making banking services accessible to all Zimbabweans, no matter where they are.

Mr Mashavave said going forward, the bank's customers can look forward to seamless transactions on all banking services, as well as vastly improved service on all its platforms.

The upgrade, which is set to be effected over the low-traffic Easter holidays, comes soon after the bank revamped it popular 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.