Access Bank Plc., a full-service commercial Nigerian bank with a network of more than 600 branches and service outlets spanning three continents, 12 countries and 45 million customers, has modernized its IT infrastructure, helping to propel the bank’s rating from 65th in the country to number one.
Central to its success was a shift in its procurement process and deployment of a range of VMware solutions enabling the bank to deliver digital services to an innovation-hungry customer base.
The financial services environment in Nigeria is exceptionally competitive. Reputation is critical, and ratings determine where customers put their money.
Customers won’t hesitate to switch service providers if their bank is not delivering the most modern and innovative services.
When Access Bank put a stake in the ground to elevate its reputation and rating to improve business and profitability, it took several strategic decisions such as pursuing modernization and embracing cloud-based services.
Access Bank carefully architected a new infrastructure using VMware vCloud Suite, VMware Carbon Black App Control, VMware vRealize Operations and VMware Horizon to ring-fence access to its most important assets: its core banking applications.
The bank now has a robust private cloud that is the backbone of the Access Bank banking infrastructure connecting its 600 branches and service outlets, 3,000 ATMs and 28,000 employees while delivering innovative digital services to customers.
“The story of Access Bank has been one of transformation from being at the bottom of the list of banks in Nigeria to being number one. There is no other bank in Sub-Saharan Africa that has the same number of active customers or who can say they have transformed their operations so dramatically and successfully, all of which we achieved with technology and VMware,” says Afolabi Ilesanmi, head of governance, architecture and planning, Access Bank. “We have seen a great ROI. The overall savings we are seeing is well over 40 percent per server. It’s fascinating when you put it into numbers, and it’s also a no-brainer.”
The Access Bank card information system, now hosted on VMware technology, fully complies with local and global Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DDS) and VMware security has been central to the bank, ensuring it can safeguard critical personal information.
“Working with Access Bank has been an extraordinary journey. When the bank set its mind on becoming the top bank in Nigeria, nothing could stop them. And identifying that the only way to do this was through technology is not only brave but exceptionally mature,” says Lorna Hardie, regional director of VMware Sub-Saharan Africa.
