Mr. Anthony M. Kituuka, managing director of Equity Bank, stated that technology has made it possible for the bank to perform 94% of its transactions outside of its branches (halls) when presenting the firm's financial results for the period ending December 2022.
However, at Shs694b, the value of transactions made inside the bank is still bigger than that of digital channels. The managing director noted that the change had made it necessary to restructure the bank's financial network, services, and digital banking system.
Mr. Kituuka stated that throughout the course of the year, the agency banking network of Equity Bank had increased to more than 8,000 agents from 7,727 agents in 2021, processing more than Shs13b per quarter.
He explained that in order to serve more Ugandans without bank accounts, the bank will keep making investments in digital banking.
The first financial institution in Uganda to use an agency banking platform was Equity Bank. It uses a separate platform from Agent Banking Company's common agent platform, which is used by more than 20 banks and has a total of 20,487 agents.
Mr. Kituuka also said that other digital banking channels, such as Eazzy stock financing, have contributed to the development of non-banking transactions. Several banks, including Stanbic, have already said that the change in banking has affected banking hall traffic, which has decreased by more than 80% for most of them.
Because of this, banks have had to make technological investments to take advantage of the transition as well as manage the introduction of new product lines to compete with emerging financial services like mobile money, which have seen rapid development over the past ten years.
