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Interview to Ms Nyambura Koigi, Kenya Post Office Savings Bank [Postbank]

Posted by | Jun 1, 2007 | |

Interview to Ms Nyambura Koigi, Kenya Post Office Savings Bank [Postbank]

Located in Eastern Africa, the Republic of Kenya borders the Indian Ocean and lays between Tanzania and Somalia and Uganda on the western side and is home to 34 million people. WSBI member Kenya Post Office Savings Bank [Postbank] is active in the extension of access to professional financial services to the population at large. News & Views has asked Ms. Nyambura Koigi, Managing Director of Postbank, to present the activities and ambitions of her institution. As President of the WSBI Africa Regional Group, she also carries a message to other African WSBI Members.

Q: Ms. Koigi, the mission of Postbank is to create a savings culture amongst Kenyans. How does your institution achieve this goal?

A: The vision of Postbank Kenya is to be the “Bank of Choice” while the mission is to provide accessible and sustainable banking and other related financial services through innovative delivery systems to the benefit of customers and other stakeholders.

We endevour to attain this great mission of creating and stimulating a savings culture, through dissemination of information, through financial education and targeted communications. With targeted communication, I mean being present at trade fairs and exhibitions, at district development forums, but also giving presentations in schools and colleges and participating at radio programs.

A concrete example of a savings education initiative is the programme we developed with the fishing communities in the Lake Victoria region. We helped them see the importance of savings. Together we identified their saving needs and recommended to them the most appropriate products for their businesses.

Postbank has been instrumental in working with other strategic partners in the design of posters to give savings education in a simplified way. We also work with university students and youth groups to promote entrepreneurship and small businesses and teach them about savings. For example we have been sponsoring the SIFE Kenya initiative (Students in Free Enterprise) to nurture entrepreneurial skills and encourage savings culture among the youth. Through these initiatives, Postbank is making a difference in the society and community we operate in.

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Branch managers from PostBank Uganda follow tailor-made banking training

Posted by | Jun 1, 2007 | |

Between June 4th and June 29th, WSBI has delivered a banking training for branch managers from PostBank Uganda. The training was part of a scholarship programme offered by the Belgian Government to support Postbank Uganda in assuming its new role as principal responsible institution for the implementation of the micro-finance part of the new ‘Prosperity for All’ (Bonna Baggagawale) programme.

PostBank Uganda (PBU) was incorporated in February 1998 as a limited liability company and took over the operations of the former Post Office Savings Bank. Its specific mission is to provide financial services (savings, loans and payments) to low and middle income segments in urban and rural areas. This role is part of the government¡¦s plan for reducing poverty through the facilitation of access to finance to microentrepreneurs and rural farmers in remote parts of the country. Considering the challenge generated by high competition, the bank needs increased capacity building support in order to improve its competences and management skills, especially in branch management as well as in risk management. This need has recently become even eager since the Ministry of Micro-Finance, within the scheme ¡§Prosperity for All¡¨, has appointed PBU to provide financing to Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and Savings and Credit Cooperative Societies (SACCOs) through on-lending and guarantee schemes. Since MFIs and SACCOs are disseminated all over the country, the distribution of loans and guarantees will be assured through the PBU branch network in order to reach the remotest areas of the country. The programme falls under the scope of the Uganda financial sector action plan, and therefore of the Ministry of Finance Planning and Development and the Ministry of Micro-Finance in particular.

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Chronopost names new management team

Posted by | May 31, 2007 | |

Chronopost, the French express subsidiary of La Poste / GeoPost, has named five new senior managers following the recent appointment of Christian Emery, previously head of ColiPoste, as managing director. Most of the new managers come from external companies.

Martin Piechowski is the new head of operations with responsibility for optimising the operator’s network of five hubs and 60 depots. He was formerly operations director at ColiPoste.

Charles Dauman has been appointed as new sales director. He was previously sales director for NeoPost France since 2001.

Sylvie Soris is now in charge of customer service. She will be responsible for improving customer satisfaction, call centre efficiency and introducing new electronic systems.

André Valade, formerly with Brink’s, the international security company, has been named head of security with responsibility for the operator’s locations and processes.

Tanneguy de Belloy, formerly director of administration and finances at Sun Microsystems France, has taken up the same post at Chronopost.

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USPS begins ‘slim jim’ testing

Posted by | May 31, 2007 | |

Earlier this month the U.S. Postal Service began testing to develop better standards for letter-size booklets, also known as “slim jim” catalogs. The USPS is also cautioning catalogers who may be considering switching to a slim-jim format that the mailing standards for these pieces are likely to change.

As more catalogers may switch to the lower-priced format in light of the current rate increase, the agency is concerned that printers need more precise mailing standards to avoid fabricating slim jims that would jam the agency’s delivery bar code sorters.

“About two weeks ago we started testing sample slim jims from printers to get a better idea of how to best develop standards for the slim jims,” said Barry Walsh, operations specialist at the USPS. “It is hard to tell which factor s are causing problems, whether it is tab positioning, tab strength or thickness, for example.”

Slim jims measure up to 6.125 inches by 11.5 inches. The USPS considers them folded self-mailers and booklets. If they weigh 3 ounces or less and are tabbed they are the largest size qualifying for letter-rate postage, which is significantly lower than recently increased Standard Mail flats postage.

The USPS has said there are not many slim jims in the system now and that, when they do appear in USPS facilities, postal employees frequently put them through the more robust AFSM-100 flats sorter as opposed to the delivery bar code sorters, which handle letter mail. However, to get the lower rates, they will have to be able to go through the delivery bar code sorter machine.

USPS is testing whether features such as thickness and tab strength on the mail pieces will have to change to ensure they are able to run on the DBCS machine. Each combination of characteristics being tested requires a specially fabricated test deck of 500 booklets that are uniform in all characteristics not tested, Mr. Walsh said.

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Sweden/EU industry: Post liberalisation…in a big country

Posted by | May 31, 2007 | |

Liberalisation of the postal sector will mark the end of an era across the EU. Making the transition to open markets will prove to be a bloody process for some – at stake are jobs, time-honoured principles such as universal service provision and cherished assets, including post offices, letter-boxes and sorting offices.

But countries such as Sweden, which liberalised in the early 1990s, warn that resistance is futile. Traditional postal service provision is being stretched by the advent of digital technology and e-commerce. The sector, says dominant postal operator Posten AG, can choose to adapt of its own volition or sink.

“Physical post will diminish if postal services don’t adapt and it will be difficult to uphold the universal service obligation in the end,” says Susanne Flyckt, chief officer for regulatory affairs at Posten, formerly a state-backed monopoly.

Sweden is a flag-bearer for the liberalisation cause. A report compiled this year by Sweden’s postal regulator shows that universal service provision, or standards guaranteeing non-discriminatory access to postal services, has not suffered as a result of market opening. “The previously high service- quality of Posten has, as a result of the liberalisation and the growing competition, even improved in terms of quality and efficiency,” says the report.

According to Flyckt, any jobs lost at Posten since market-opening have been “down to technological developments and changes in customer behaviour”. The regulatory report, published in March, shows that the introduction of new techniques, including highly automated sorting centres and the reorganisation of the post office network, in any case, predated liberalisation.

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Pitney Bowes acquires Digital Cement Inc.

Posted by | May 31, 2007 | |

Pitney Bowes Inc. announced the successful completion of the acquisition of Digital Cement Inc. for approximately USD 40 million in cash. Digital Cement is a professional services firm that provides relationship management strategy and services to help companies acquire, retain, manage and grow their customer relationships. In October 2006, Pitney Bowes made an initial investment of USD 12 million in Digital Cement, resulting in a minority ownership position and a strategic partnership to market its services. Digital Cement will become part of the company’s Marketing Services business led by Mark Cattini.

Digital Cement provides Fortune 500 clients in consumer packaged goods, telecom, financial services, retail and health care industries, such as Kraft, FedEx and John Hancock, with a suite of consultative offerings including:
— strategic planning to address business needs,
— customer experience planning to maximize customer lifetime value,
— channel and platform integration to deliver unified customer communications, and
— customer analytics to ensure that marketing programs achieve their desired results

Digital Cement employs 121 people, most of whom are located in its headquarters in Toronto, Canada.

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