Hand in hand with Cobis, Venezuelan bank Bancaribe has overcome important challenges that include the need to update its processes and cope with the Venezuelan crisis and the pandemic.
Bancaribe is a young bank, compared to other institutions in the region. It began operations on November 3, 1954, in the city of Puerto Cabello, Carabobo, Venezuela, and since that time it has been dealing with an important presence in Caracas and the interior of the country.
With the current situation in Venezuela, the Digital Transformation of banking requires a greater effort and this is what Bancaribe is demonstrating by deploying an updated project with a long-term impact.
Hence, the relationship with Cobis has become a relevant issue to help in the management of its transactions. Cobis is a recognized brand in the financial sector of the region and for decades it has provided technology to manage the banking core of 69 entities that include, apart from Bancaribe in Venezuela, organizations such as Santander in Mexico, Davivienda in Colombia, GlobalBank in Panama and Terrabank in the United States.
Cobis’ offering focuses on two fronts, Cobis Core and Cobis Edge, the first is a banking core focused on transactions while the second front is dedicated to the omnichannel management of customer relationships.
On the other hand, the impact that the pandemic has had on the global economy is undeniable and the financial sector has received much of its impact. Therefore, the digital acceleration has demonstrated its worth responding to the need to interact with the bank’s traditional customers. Cobis had a direct relationship with the offer of new solutions with which Bancaribe responded promptly to its clients within the branch and in the digital environment.
With this, Bancaribe generates an important change in the relationship with its clients in the medium and long term.
Martín Pérez, the Executive President of Bancaribe, explains how the relationship with Cobis works, and the present and future impact of their joint work.
How has the bank’s Digital Transformation process been and how has Cobis participated in this process?
For Bancaribe, Cobis is an important ally rather than a technology provider. Since the end of 2018, the bank began to conceptually work on the foundations of its Digital Transformation to build its concept, under the Venezuelan context, which is extremely difficult and volatile for banks, and Cobis has been a fundamental part of this process.
We had to spend a lot of time understanding our Digital Transformation process and Cobis accompanied us in the strategic direction, guiding us in the change management process because Digital Transformation also has to do with the change in the culture and vision of a different business model for the company.
We also went through a process of understanding what our maturity point was in Digital Transformation, which was at a beginner level, but we had a clear vision of where we needed to go.
In 2020 we began to execute transformation projects and we can say that we have made significant progress, especially on issues that have to do with Bancaribe’s talent capabilities, analytics and Big Data, and incorporate APIs into our banking platform to make it open. We also deployed our Aria chatbot that was recently honored by Fintech Americas with the award for Innovation in User Experience and Engagement.
In all this process Cobis participated including the cash management modernization project, managing to modernize the solution with an option to give mobility to the bank’s cashiers with Cobis OmniTeller, which it has made available to our treasurers. Legal clients and companies use this solution for the management of payments and transfers, and it was of great importance for us because we were the first in the Venezuelan market to launch this tool.
Out of the Cobis technology you have implemented, what do you think has made the most important contribution?
The first is the vision of Cobis to improve and modernize the core banking solution, with special care for the intermediate layers and the customer, and we highlight that they are transactional solutions with excellent customer service.
We also highlight the technology for handling all massive payments made through the Cobis platform and they have given us an important competitive advantage because now we can do them in real-time and online.
Cobis has also helped us to install our mobile banking, which has been a great competitive advantage to improve the user experience.
What technology projects do you have in the future and how do you think Cobis can support them?
At a general level, the bank still has a long way to go in the areas of analytics, process automation and offering a truly memorable omnichannel customer experience. Cobis plays an extremely important role in each bank’s customer-facing projects, starting from the definition of the technological upgrade path.
We must also rethink all the processes of our salesforce due to the issues of the pandemic and hybrid work and the change of the consumer in their consumption habits and use of financial products since the client does not go to physical offices and in this respect we hope that Cobis will help us to carry out the entire distance selling process, from digital onboarding, through all the necessary service to close the sale.
I would like to add that Cobis has been a great ally in the difficult and complex moments of our institution, not only because of the crisis in our country but also in the operational part of the bank. We have had very critical operational continuity events and Cobis has been an ally in these difficult times, such as when we lost our entire data center because there was a fire in the hosting provider’s facilities and Cobis was very close to us in the process of recovery of services and reinstallation on the bank’s new website. This shows us the great commitment of Cobis with the bank and with our clients, strengthening every day an alliance that has been working for 20 years and that we hope will continue for a long time to come.
Thus, Bancaribe manages to advance in a challenging environment, but with the assurance of having robust foundations that help to deploy timely digital solutions in the present and the medium and long term.
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