STEWARD Bank has restructured its ICT department after weeks of failing to service its clients, who have been complaining about poor service in the last three weeks.
BY TATIRA ZWINOIRA
In a statement yesterday, Steward Bank said it had appointed Arthur Matsaudza as the acting chief technology officer, Gedion Moyo (head digital transformation), Luckson Madziwa (digital products development manager) and James Ritala (information systems operations manager).
The move is part of reorganising their ICT department, as the bank indicated it is preparing to cater for higher transaction volumes.
Steward Bank CEO, Lance Mambondiani told NewsDay yesterday that the transfer problems that customers experienced over the past few weeks were due to a glitch in their system, emanating from a surge in real time gross settlement (RTGS) transactions.
But with Steward Bank being one of the few financial institutions that continues to accept new account applications, questions have been raised on whether the bank should first sort out its systems before accepting new clients.
“Would you rather we stop people from joining the banking sector because we are having a little bit of challenges, which we can address now or would we rather address a national problem, which is to ensure everybody is at least embraced into the financial system?” Mambondiani asked rhetorically.
“We also know that we have to make some changes in as far as our capacity is concerned and the stability of our systems.
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“We have actually invested quite a substantial amount of money, particularly in our ICT infrastructure. We know we have the capacity of having a platform that has enough stability pretty much the same as the EcoCash platform to address and to deal with all our clients’ transactions and that is what we are focusing on right now. We have also currently restructured our ICT team.”
He said they had resolved all delays, but that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s RTGS system going down last Wednesday and Thursday exacerbated their problems.
For weeks, clients have complained to the bank, saying they were unable to process their payments, with delays ranging anywhere from seven to 14 days in some cases, a process that should take 24 hours at most.
On their Facebook page, in spite of Steward Bank reassuring their clients, many have rejected the bank’s claims that the transaction challenges were soon to end.
“I am really saddened by the way Steward Bank is handling our money. Can you imagine that my money, which was transferred on May 18 only reflected on May 27? What explanation do they have for all this inconvenience?” a customer lamented.
