In its five-year plan for the 2017-2021 period, the Agricultural Bank will invest about $ 60 million in its process of digital transformation of services, of which in the next two years it will inject about $ 15 million annually. Of this last figure, the majority ($ 10 million) will be to reinforce the human talent of the institution and the rest in computer programs, servers and digital infrastructure.
The bank has a force of 550 people dedicated to technology and digital transformation (programmers, designers, marketers, computer engineers and user experience experts), of which 250 have joined in the last year.
“The next phase and that will be the deepest is to bring all the services and banking agencies to the digital field.”
Rafael Barraza, CEO
In the opinion of Rafael Barraza, executive president of said institution, they are working on this digital change from three axes: to support people who in their daily life require that digital facilitate things, offer more effective services to client companies and an interaction in front of the Government reducing bureaucracy with electronic channels.
The products that the bank already has in electronic banking are the mobile app and the online banking platform. The app channel has 125,000 active users, which is a doubling compared to the 65,000 users they had a year ago.
Increase
Of the more than 1 million clients that Banco Agrícola has in its portfolio, last year they made 146.3 million transactions (10 million more than in 2018), of which 10% were made in agencies, 42% in digital channels (3 % more than last year), 40% in kiosks and ATM and the rest in financial correspondents.
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In addition, in May 2019 they made available Easy Account, their first savings account that can be opened from home and, in October, the QR Code, which allows transfers to be made for payments in small businesses. As of December, 8,500 accounts have been created through Easy Account and expect to reach 25,000 during this year. As for the codes, 3,187 have been generated that have generated about 20,000 transactions.
Barraza says that the next phase of this digital transformation “and that it will be the deepest” is to bring all the services and banking agencies to the digital field.
A pending challenge is to improve the procedures and regulations, implementing e-government solutions so that more people can access financial services and scale it massively.
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