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welcome to the microfinance podcast listen to inspiring interviews and take a look at the tools and products that are used in the field the microfinance podcast is produced by micro say market led solutions for financial services and is brought to you by moving planet films it was a model of mobile banking utilizes the bank led model and addresses really the three challenges that the unbanked face accessibility affordability and availability and really it's a methodology that brings the bank to the unbanked rather than getting the unbanked to the bank and it uses the power of the mobile both in opening accounts and in providing a channel for transactions for the purchases of prepaid for the payment of accounts for sending money home a fully functional bank account the intention with wizard is to grow from a transactional base to providing other banking services including savings and loans including funeral policies and we hope that we will grow along with our customers needs our customer base and we've grown slowly in a very controlled way is more than a couple of hundred thousand we went through a stage where we were opening vast numbers of other counts during the course of a month only to find that many of them were never used so we rethought some of those strategies and focus now on more quality accounts where we can work very meaningfully with the segment of the market in teaching them about financial services making their lives easier and giving them a safe store for their money it's a new brand we did not have a big brudder a household name brand to support us in our efforts so what are the biggest challenges and thereby obstacles that we had was creating credibility and Trust in a brand new brand creating trust and credibility in new technology we will leap frogging being the first in the in the market we will leap frogging people who never had a bank account and giving them capability that even banked customers could not do at that time all of the big four major banks in South Africa followed what we did some six months or a year later but it was quite interesting that challenge in getting people to feel comfortable using the technology clearly opening the account needed to be easy it needed to be seamless it needed to happen 24 hours a day seven days a week that didn't interfere with people's work lives and I think our whiz kid model has proven to be very effective in that we've invested in people we only employ unemployed people we train them we certify them and the market at that level feels more comfortable opening a bank account with somebody they know somebody's from their community somebody that they trust so that if they've got a problem they're nowhere to call on it it's a virtual bank we have a call center that is open speaks all of the 11 official languages and speaks at a level that the market feels comfortable with and understands so those were probably some of the major channels that we had we haven't found technology to be a barrier but it's about changing behavior and changing behaviors we all know does not happen instantaneously it's not like switching on a light switch it's continuous reinforcement it's continuous presence and it's continuous empathy with the market and treating that market with dignity and with respect the role of the regulator and bank supervisors quite interesting and I think clearly we are dealing with people's money despite the fact that they may not have a lot of it and the fact that is a regulated industry does bring that level of market a degree of comfort so I think regulation does form a critical part of banking and providing banking services including payments however when it comes to to some of the issues around kyc and and AML there is a huge cost that is associated with it and I think we welcome our regulators that Africa is taking a very pragmatic and risk-based approach to say the provided there are certain limits on the account and those limits are strictly controlled and strictly monitored then we can relax some of the criteria around the KYC issues such as proof of residential address if the limits are exceeded we then need to go the extra mile and and get that additional information I believe in and are probably not alone in this but maybe not everybody agrees with me that probably one of the biggest barriers to banking the unbanked is around some of the regulatory issues it adds a huge cost to the business and it's not saying as I said at the beginning that you have to do away with regulation I think regulation is important it brings the industry credibility but I think it needs a better understanding of the plight of the unbanked that because a person doesn't comply 100% with all of the regulation to simply freeze their account so that they can't exist their money is not a solution because all that does is destroy any confidence that the person may have in building up confident in a bank so I think that that could be of great assistance and it's a worldwide phenomenon and worldwide issue that I think regulators need to look at I think regulators would all agree that the intention behind some of the AML legislation KY see legislation was never to make it more difficult and more onerous for the unbanked to become banked but it has become a very unfortunate consequence of legislation that has been imposed so i think that's that's one of the issues the second issue is really a round of philosophy as I said at the beginning of getting the bank to the unbanked not the unbanked to the bank and to rely on your traditional big bank thinking to thank the unbanked is probably not going to reality so the space needs to be opened up perhaps to innovative entrepreneurs who are prepared to try different things but always under the understanding that you are dealing with people's money and it needs to be within an environment that people who have trust and have credibility because unfortunately money does attract unscrupulous operators who will take advantage particularly the porn I don't think there can be allowed to happen so one needs to tread warily and it sets a it's a difficult blind but I think one that can be managed I think many of us have long forgotten how difficult life is without access to a basic bank account I think many of us forgotten just how expensive it is not only from a money point of view but from a time point of view where you don't have access to financial services so wizard bridges that gap and provides people with functionality that enables them to do simple things that would normally cost them a lot of money and a lot of time so we focus very much on their needs and having satisfied one or two gila needs that they've got they will grow into other financial services the take-up has been good and I think once people get used to it as with anything else and they build trust and credibility trust in the system comes with usage so the more they use it the more they believe in it the more they believe in it the more they use it at the end of the day that that's what gets us very excited about this particular business and at the end of the day it really fulfills our dream which is to make economic citizens of the millions of people who have been previously excluded I've always believed that mobile banking will probably be the next major wave in the payment space and research that has been done by C gap and others have proven that the one driving factor behind mobile banking and mobile payments is is around convenience it's with you all of the time hence with its pay offline my bank in my pocket because it is always with you so I really do believe that the future for mobile banking is huge I think it's important that we start seeing as some success stories and a lot of people ask me what is success is success having a million customers 10 million customers 20 million customers I'm not sure I'm on a simple businessman and to me success is really about building a commercially viable business that can be taken to any part of the world of vision is to bank the unbanked of the world utilizing mobile technology and I see a great future for mobile banking