Lesson from a Nigerian Bank about Social Media

 

A thought leadership series from KPMG points out that there is a lot we can learn from Africa about the use of Social Media. For example, here is a excerpt about Nigeria's largest bank:

"Recognizing the unique needs and demographics of their customers, GTBank’s executives encouraged the bank to go further in leveraging social media to identify ways to make banking easier and more accessible for current and potential customers.

As a result, the Bank now boasts a fully functional online social media ‘customer care’ team (available 24 hours a day, seven days a week) and has launched a Facebook banking application which allows people to open GTBank accounts on Facebook. Future enhancements will customers to securely transfer money, purchase mobile air time, pay bills, and confirm their account balances, all through their Facebook accounts.

In this, GTBank ranks among just a handful of banks around the world that plan to offer this feature; not surprisingly, most are in the developing world (such as India’s ICICI and Brazil’s Bradesco) where traditional bank account opening processes are often considered cumbersome or inaccessible.