Bank of Africa has deployed CreditQuest software from a Swiss-based banking IT consulting firm – SOFGEN in a bid to manage credit in all its subsidiaries in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
The software helps the bank to mitigate against losses that stem from defaulted loans.
The system enables the bank to have a centralized view of customer activities, to enforce credit appraisal rules and processes and to improve credit application turnaround time and monitoring.
CreditQuest has also enabled Bank of Africa to reduce paperwork in its credit process and to eliminate manual interventions.
Bank of Africa has acquired the system at a time when loan defaulting is on the rise among Kenyan banks, with the 2013 Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) Annual Report stating that non-performing loans increased over the last one year.
“The stock of gross non-performing loans (NPLs) increased by 34.4 percent to Ksh. 77.3 billion in June 2013 thereby raising the ratio of gross NPLs to gross loans from 4.5 percent to 5.3 percent over 2012/2013 period,” says the CBK report, adding that the increase in NPLs is attributed to high interest rates and reduced economic activities during the period towards and after the March 2013 general elections.
“We evaluated different options and determined that CreditQuest best meets our requirements,” said Kwame Ahadzi, Managing Director, Bank of Africa, Kenya. “CreditQuest offers modules covering our entire portfolio of corporate, SME and retail lending processes. SOFGEN did an excellent job implementing CreditQuest at the bank and integrating it with our core system.”
CreditQuest has now been successfully installed in over 10 banks in sub-Sahara Africa and in over 200 banks across the world.
Bank of Africa subsidiaries in East Africa are strategic accounts for SOFGEN as we continue our match towards becoming the preferred provider of IT solutions to banks in Africa” observed Tunde Oladele, Chief Executive Officer, SOFGEN Africa. “We intend to deepen our relationship with Bank of Africa to assure that the benefits of the bank’s investment in CreditQuest are realized.”
