Set for a March 2003 completion date, the first two phases of the re-structuring will be on December 30.

Speaking to The Financial Gleaner this week, NCB Director Herb Phillips said the aim of the million dollar investment is to make NCB the best financial institution in this hemisphere, totally focused on products that are geared to the customers through service.

"We will be putting in new systems for investment totally focused on the banking service. It's not just the core banking system that we are changing. We are putting in new systems for the pension fund management, Omni insurance, upgrading our card system in three different areas, upgrading our remittance system and our core line of business ­ all will have new applications ­ not just the functionality," Mr. Phillips said.

According to the Director, the applications carry out processing at the request of customers so whenever they want to make a deposit, or make an investment or buy insurance, it can be executed seamlessly. Additionally, NCB wants to make it very flexible for customers to come into the system through a myriad of touch points, so that they will be able to access the services and applications.

"Our architecture is such that the touch points are channel agnostic. Customers can come in on any channel, the obvious one being the branch, but we hope to move customers out of the branch and have them do banking not only on the Automated Banking Machines (ABMs), but also through Internet banking, through call centres, sales agents (who might be mobile) can go into their homes/offices," Mr. Phillips said.

Managing Director Aubyn Hill noted that what the bank expects to happen is that it will formulate an up-to-date "nervous system" that will remove the need for a lot of paper out of the system/branch.

"It will also help us to centralise a lot of the activities that now go on in the bank, and most of the staff in the banks will then be there to serve customers - but most importantly - the new system will help us to convert this organisation into a selling organisation where whether we sell by the telephone or for high net worth individuals or retirees, our sales people can visit them with a basket of products ranging from Omni Insurance, bonds or even shares from the various subsidiaries or normal credit cards and deposit products. So we'll have a full range of products to sell and we then must convert ourselves into a selling organisation rather than one that waits for customers to come in, Mr. Hill said."

Mr. Phillips said cellular telephones will also play a role in the upgraded NCB. Through text messages, customers will be able to check their balances and shift money from one account to the other.

We will:

1. be able to give them one statement for everything in the entire financial institution and

2. satisfy requests which are now very manual such as change of address, new cheque books - this will be done electronically.

Presently the configuration of our branches is about three quarters back office and a quarter front office; but that situation will be reversed to reflect an 80-90 per cent front office and a 10 per cent back office because auditing, statements, vouchers, counting of cash will all be centralised under one nervous system for future operations.

All those activities that were done by individual branches will now be centralised. Branch staff will now primarily serve and sell. The real push for NCB will be its ability to cross-sell customers because each customer requires about 16 different financial products.

Mr. Phillips told the Financial Gleaner, "we are only doing three of those products with the customer's home bank, so we are dealing with many institutions to meet our financial needs like: investment, insurance, banking and financial advice. What we want to do, is have a one-stop where we can provide all 16 financial products (or more), in a flexible, convenient and friendly manner. Cross-selling is tremendous."

The new NCB will have an electronic signature verification tool so that with just a signature or phone number, the bank will able to bring up on the screen, the customer's entire portfolio.

NEW THEME

NCB's theme for their new vision is "Build Wealth", whether it's as small as $5.00 weekly or $100,000 weekly, the bank intends to help customers to build wealth over their time with the institution.

NEW SYSTEM

According to Mr. Hill, the system is built so that a lay person without any technical background can check boxes of parameters that will tell one how to function, how to execute transaction processes; how to execute a loan without involving a programmer.

"We will be able to go to the market at a much quicker rate with new products because we don't have to go to a programming department to write programmes specific to new products.

JOBS

But what about the jobs of the existing programmers?

Mr. Hill assured the Financial Gleaner, "we are talking about initial and ordinary adjustments. We are coming with major changes but we will not be putting programmers out of business; we will be able to do a lot more than usual without a programmer and at the same time, get on with the business, but when things become technical, we will call in the programmers. It takes many of them to make using the new system happen."

He further stressed, "we will pull out a lot of the activities that now go on in the branch, make them service delivery centres, train and retrain our people, freeing up most of those who now do paper work. We will be challenging each person in our organisation to journey on in terms of their profession, raise the bar in how banking and the delivery of financial services are done. I know from experience it can be done."

PARTNERS

NCB collaborated with INFOSYS, an Indian based company which is their main partner in the information system being used. INFOSYS is one of the top three companies in India that survived the crash of the dot coms. Mr. Phillips stressed that the bank's parent company AIC, knows their method of thinking and their philosophy as an organisation.

"Lew Chin has been there personally to check things out and we have sent 14 people there on an eight-week intensive training programme. They in turn trained 60 persons and those 60 will train over 2,000 others. All of the training is on the core banking side and will be finished by the middle of December."

The other partners are ALTO, Sun Micro Systems and Fujitsu/ICL in Jamaica which are helping with the transformation in a number of areas including the roll-out of 2,000 PCs to all branches.

This massive exercise cannot be done during banking hours. The flat screen Dell computers loaded with all the applications in what is described as the largest and fastest installation of PC roll-out in Jamaica's history; a very challenging exercise in logistics that went with minor hitches. Mr. Hill and Mr. Phillips have high commendations for the teams at work.

"I've been to branches explaining what transformation really means, about the new way of dealing with customers," Mr. Phillips said.

Is the staff comfortable with the changes?

Mr. Hill observed, "when you go through major changes like these in organisations, people naturally go through stress, and to that end NCB has brought in a reflexologist to help.

"We had a mock roll-out in 22 branches islandwide last weekend and all senior managers were out there committed to letting staff know we are with them. The energy and enthusiasm shown by staff is amazing," he said.

CABLE &WIRELESS

The other partner in the reorganisation is Cable & Wireless which has a huge contract to manage the network of integrated voice, data and image. The network's band width will be increased to eliminate information choking branches again; quick response time, video conferencing and at the call centre, the customer will be able to see the agents.

WEAK LINK

Mr. Phillips pointed to the unreliable electrical supply in Jamaica.

"With this amount of investment, we cannot afford brown-outs that will burn out semi-conductors etc. This can be very costly and Jamaica has a tremendous number of power outages. We have decided to invest some of the money on upgrading our wires and back-up supply units with generators and batteries at all our installations across the island, thus guaranteeing 100 per cent up time."

TRAINING

Training of over 100 persons weekly is now taking place in five centres across the country. The centres are Kingston, Montego Bay, Mandeville, Ocho Rios, Morant Bay. Implementation will take place in two phases: the core banking system implementation will be on December 30 and all lines of business, call centre and Internet banking will also be December 30. All other banking activities will be on March 30, 2003.

TREMENDOUS STRAIN AND PRESSURE

To ensure everything works, from now until the end of December, NCB will have mock conversions. They learnt a lot from the one done in the Cross Roads branch recently and will do some more rigorous ones "before we flick the switch." Things are now close to 70 per cent complete and according to Mr. Hill staff are now starting to see the transformation.

Mr. Phillips sees the investment as one of tremendous goodwill for Jamaica. "We are committed to setting high standards of professionalism and we want NCB to be the best place to work, where people can be intellectually challenged and where we can be good service providers and corporate citizens."

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