Ladies and Gentlemen ;

Distinguished Guests ;

All Protocols observed ;

It is a pleasure for me to grace this function.  The subject of our Workshop to day has been: “Service Delivery within Financial Institutions” I personally consider this timely and important.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished guests ;

As you may all recall, this issue was among the top priority on the agenda of last year’s Leadership Retreat in Gisenyi. Time and again H.E president Paul Kagame has emphasized the need for all Rwandans to improve the way we conduct business urging Rwandans to avoid “accepting a culture of mediocrity”. I therefore wish to commend the Private Sector Federation and RDB’s efforts in implementing the decisions of the Leadership Retreat; although it should ideally be a concern for all us.

Two, among our mandates as the Central bank is to encourage and maintain stable and competitive financial systems in the country; supervise and regulate activities of banks and other financial institutions. The current trend in Rwanda’s banking sector and other financial institutions indicate a very competitive industry. This is a healthy situation for the country’s economic growth but also very dangerous to non-performing financial institutions – which risk loosing clients to more aggressive, creative and innovative institutions.

Research has shown that some of the causes of the poor service delivery are inherent of our conventional ways of doing business. We tend not to have Urgency in our execution of duties. And this thinking is taken to our work places which affects our output. These customary methods of working have therefore affected the service delivery that we all see in our financial institutions around the country. Disgruntled clients will always look for alternatives when a given financial institution is not offering the expected standards – the client keeps moving from one bank to another in search for better services. If this happens to an investor, he may chose to leave the country to another country which to us is a big loss and may have an impact on the country’s economic growth.

Research carried out by the Institute of policy Analysis and Research (IPAR) in July this year (2009) indicate that customer service in Rwanda is seen as worse in comparison with countries in the regions: Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi.  The IPAR research highlights that using the “satisfaction profit chain” approach, if customer service were to improve significantly, it could increase the Rwandan Gross Domestic Profit (GDP), as much as 40 million dollars a year by 2012. I want to equally believe that the opposite could be true: Poor service delivery may cost us more than 40 million dollars.

From my interaction with varied personalities, some have indicated to me that financial institutions do not train their staff in areas that require specialization. In this era of the computer age, there are ever-changing computer applications and new innovations applicable to all sectors including: finance, banking, health, among others. It is the onus of innovating financial institutions therefore to keep abreast with current global computer changes and train their staff accordingly. Failure to do this has kept our financial institutions operating mechanically which frustrates their clients.

Connected with the above, is the issue of expansion and renovations of bank premises. Many bank managers have indicated to me that clients complain of poor service delivery associated with banks trying to renovate their premises and end up reducing their working areas. This in many ways impact on the service delivery because of reduced space of operation. This however, should not be viewed as a challenge but rather a remedy because when banks expand their areas of operation, they are most likely to offer even better services. I will later on expound on the innovative ways through which the banks are doing to solve these challenges. However, financial institutions have not fully evolved as may be required to provide financial services to the citizens as required. For instance, the research conducted by FinScope Rwanda in 2008, indicate that 14% of our population have access to formal banking services, 26% have access to other informal financial services while 62% are excluded from financial services. Only 21% of Kigali City dwellers are more likely to be banked and formally served. Overall, 14% of adult Rwandan population is “banked”. This is a low percentage compared to countries in the region like South Africa with 60% formally banked and only 25% financially excluded; while Botwana 44% and 45% formally banked and 46% and 52%  financially excluded respectively. This simply indicates that our banking and financial institutions sector still needs to double its effort in bringing services closer to people.

Related to the challenge of staff training and lack of technical personnel is intermittent network and power supply. Bank and financial institutions may be limited to access clients’ accounts as a result of loss of connection from broadband and bandwidth providers which result in poor service delivery to clients. Some time this is associated with lack of skilled personnel to manage the new infrastructure.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished guests;

Allow me to point out that it is a national agenda that these challenges are quickly corrected. While the recent World Bank/IFC Doing Business Report ranked Rwanda among the highly reforming counties in the way they conducting business, we should not become complacent but rather find more innovative ways of improving our service delivery. The government through the Ministry of Public Service has introduced long working hours from 40 to 45 hours a week. Other financial institutions have even gone beyond these hours by motivating staff with additional incentives to motivate them to work for longer hours.

Financial institutions have started expanding and opening more branches within Kigali and upcountry. These will not only reduce the risks associated with rural people transporting bulk money to Kigali but will also address the challenge of access.

In an effort to deliver better services to its customers, banks have undertaken the following measures:

·       Dynamic extension of branch network,

·       Introducing Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and in- house tellers;

·       Hiring specialized staff and introducing customer care units;

·       Customer care training for all staff from management to supporting  personnel;

·       Strong adherence by banks to the National Payment System;

·       The extension of working time. Banks are working till late (8:00 pm) and in week ends ( Saturday and Sunday).

Automated Teller machines (ATM) have proved to reduce pressure on counter services. The automated banking is a modern way of withdrawing and depositing money. While this has its own challenges associated with fraud but when well managed, the system facilitates quick and easy service delivery to clients.  Related with this is the internet banking which is the modern way of doing business in developed countries

Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished guests ;

A lot could be talked about this subject of Service delivery and doing business but previous speakers have already highlighted issues that require attention just like I have elaborated above.

Allow me now, to thank you all for participating in this workshop that has challenged us all particularly those in the banking sector and financial institutions to review how we conduct business.

I thank you for your attendance and contributions.

Thank you.