26 Feb 2018

Financial Technology (Fintech) has a potential to bring about solutions to banking and economic landscape, financial pundits have said.

Deliberating at the Economic Outlook Forum organised by Barclays Bank on February 22 in Gaborone, they said the Economic Forum was meant to drive conversations and positive change on the financial sector.

In an interview with BOPA, head of marketing and corporate relations, Ms Duduetsang Molloy said the idea of the forum was to keep the debate going and review the recent budget speech so that their customers could also understand the speech better and see where and how they could contribute to the economy of Botswana.

“From this forum we need to move forward; as a bank we need to explore how we can help Fintech grow in Botswana, how can we better innovate and collaborate to meet the needs of our clients and as Barclays Bank this is a platform we will continue with as it has the potential to bring about great change,” Ms Molloy stated.

In his presentation, managing executive for Alternative Business Model and group Innovation for the Barclays Africa Group, Mr Aupa Monyatsi stated that Fintech provided an opportunity not a threat to banking and therefore Barclays needed to partner with Fintech start-ups in order to drive financial inclusion, deliver new solutions and products to customers.

“At the Barclays Africa group level we run a series of incubators and accelerators for Fintech start-ups and we have seen how much they add value to customers and to the bank,” Mr Monyatsi commented.

He stated that since Botswana had the right policies and the right government support, there was an opportunity to incubate innovators and Fintechs not only so that they deliver for Botswana, but for Africa well. Specially elected Member of Parliament, Ms Bogolo Kenewendo was also a panelist and gave a presentation on the Botswana business climate with some reference to the recent budget speech.

Ms Kenewendo’s interventions were in relation to a motion she recently tabled in Parliament in regards to the ease of doing business in Botswana by ensuring efficiency, particularly to the process of starting a business in the country, which takes 48 days.

“In a nutshell, the business climate in Botswana is challenging and our doing business ranks have been declining drastically, which goes to show that we are not evolving and developing as fast as other economies and we are not catching up with newer systems, but I am optimistic that is about to change,” Ms Kenewendo said. Ms Kenewendo stated that

Botswana had the skilled people necessary to drive positive economic change and it was up to us all to play our individual roles in developing the economy. Ends