Placing a Core Banking System at the Centre of Sacco Recovery

In the current landscape of Saccos, it is clear that disruption has already happened. Most of the Saccos around have already adopted technology and are beginning to take in a core banking system.

Rosemary Karachi, the Project Manager at Netcompany-Intrasoft, delivered a keynote address on how Saccos can leverage on a core banking system to improve their services to members. Our Saccos have digitized and adopted digital transformation, and we have also seen API  architecture adoption.

“Today, the member is asking to be connected to the whole world and at the end of the day, to have this delivered we need a strong backbone which is the core banking system,” Karachi noted.

“We have seen that indeed there is transformation. There is improvements from where we are coming from but one thing we have also realized is that some of these deployments have wrong architecture,” she added.

The best architecture for your Sacco or business is basically to have this core banking system at the centre of everything and integrated to all the other things that you want to do at the business or Sacco. In the past, Saccos had everything in one place and it only meant that if any of the solutions went down, then there would be no service for the members.

“Position or place the co-banking system with the right architecture, integrate it to your omnichannel, CRM, and everything else you want to provide to your members. Then get the right architecture in place so that you provide value to the members,” Karachi advised the Sacco leaders present at the Africa SaccoTech forum held at the Nairobi Serena Hotel.

It is clear that just having a core banking system is not enough, you need to support it with the right architecture. Without the right architecture, then you won’t be able to draw value.

Karachu further noted that most core banking systems today are coming with a sniffing functionality which is also adding value. For instance, if a member has defaulted and they have their current account active, anytime there is any inflow in that account, the core banking system will automatically fetch and recover the loan.

This is just one of the things that were a big challenge before.