The Challenge
A premier commercial bank in East Africa was struggling with stagnant retail growth and increasing pressure from agile fintech startups. Their legacy core banking system required customers to visit physical branches for basic account opening procedures, resulting in high abandonment rates. Furthermore, their mobile app suffered from low engagement and poor user reviews, making it difficult to cross-sell profitable credit and investment products.
Our Approach
Rumayo Consulting Group deployed a cross-functional team of digital strategists, financial analysts, and UX/UI experts to orchestrate a comprehensive digital transformation. First, we conducted a rigorous 6-week diagnostic of their entire customer journey, identifying critical friction points in the onboarding process. We then partnered with their IT department to architect a resilient, API-driven middleware layer, decoupling the customer-facing applications from the rigid legacy core.
Concurrently, we designed and launched a radically simplified, mobile-first onboarding flow that utilized advanced facial recognition and automated KYC (Know Your Customer) database integrations, allowing accounts to be opened entirely via mobile in under 3 minutes. Finally, we helped establish a new agile "Digital Factory" within the bank to continuously iterate on feature development based on real-time customer data.
Impact
- 210% increase in monthly new account openings, heavily driven by the under-30 demographic.
- 40% reduction in cost-to-serve for retail customers, as branch traffic shifted to self-service digital channels.
- Successfully launched three new digital lending products within the first 6 months, generating an additional 15% in net fee income.
- The institution was recognized by regional regulatory bodies as a pioneer in digital financial inclusion.