Agency Banking
If you lived in a suburban area in an African country like Tanzania a decade ago, you may recall how strenuous it was to visit the bank. People in the rural areas suffered the inconvenience of traveling to the nearest town with a bank to open a bank account and send or receive money.
This happened because there only were bank branches at central locations, usually in the bigger cities, where everyone visited to carry out their transactions. After all, there was no alternative solution.
The alternative came up with the evolution of information and communications technologies (ICT) that enabled Financial Institutions to create a new Alternative Delivery Channel (ADC).
Agency Banking
Agency Banking is a strategy in the Financial Industry that uses authorized Agents to deliver financial services to customers in remote areas and beyond the reach of the traditional branch network. This was the best way that Banks found to serve consumers in rural areas, especially in emerging markets, since the construction of branches in peripheral and poor areas involves costs that are too high compared to the expected return.
Hence, Agency Banking is a type of Branchless Banking that has become a huge opportunity, in developing markets, for Banks to grow their reach and customer base efficiently and at low costs. Banks can now extend their activity to rural areas more quickly and serve unbanked and underserved communities. For this reason, Agency Banking has a positive impact on Financial Inclusion, as it allows populations in rural areas to access essential financial services.
The model of Agency Banking, as the name suggests, uses Agent Networks to deliver financial services. Agent Networks represent a very flexible and easily expandable distribution model to new areas at low operational costs. But besides being a cost-efficient channel, Agents guarantee the security and compliance of the service.
Consumers in rural areas have difficulties in using technologies, so it is not enough to provide solutions such as net banking to them. Agents have a very important role in customer assistance: they help in explaining banking products, in the digital processes of registration and onboarding of services and in the verification of identity for security purposes.
Agency Banking is part of the channel-mix as an alternative distribution channel. However, due to the last-mile context, it has its own characteristics that make its management a major challenge for Banks. Who are the primary participants?
Therefore, choosing an Agency Banking software that matches the demands of this channel is a critical step to its success.
Before any service provider embarks on a branchless banking model, they must ensure that they have a robust system that can integrate with an agency banking solution like Papersoft’s Last-Mile Banking toolkit, to create a seamless banking experience for its consumers.
Existing Agent Networks with field Agents in different communities register with the Bank to provide services on their behalf.
They are vetted, regulated and trained before they are authorized or permitted to partner with the organization.
There are different sorts of Agents: moving Agents (with no fixed location), merchants and small shop owners.
In some cases, Banks also have employees in the field, and manage them as part of the Agent Network. Papersoft’s platform makes it easy to manage different teams and categories of Agents. It allows you to organize groups and teams by permissions, skills or characteristics.·