Kenya: Equity Bank is beefing up its mobile unit team in readiness for its roll out. In a statement, the bank said it is recruiting professionals to beef up the already existing human resource for its Finserve subsidiary. Finserve will run its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).
Some have worked with ICT and financial services majors globally including Oracle, HP, Vodafone Group and Morgan Stanley. This has led many analysts argue that the bank is looking at a bigger share of the telecoms market than just mobile money. Among the Finserve employees include the former director general Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) Eng John Waweru who will head Finserve as an executive chairman.
The firm is head hunting for a technical specialist, a mobile developer and a product manager for value added services. This is as it gets into the final stages of preparing to launch the MVNO in July.
Tongues wagging
“The team of technology specialists will be in addition to the human resource working with the bank in developing the mobile telephony product,” said Chief Executive James Mwangi. The bank got tongues wagging in the market last week, after an investor briefing, where Mwangi gave a preview into the banks strategy on the MVNO.
The firm said it would issue special SIM cards to its estimated nine million customers by the time it launches the MVNO in July. The SIM cards have a stick-on SIM card that piggybacks on and works with the already existing SIM cards.
He also unveiled the team that has been laying the groundwork for the mobile unit, all of them with an impressive background in the areas of telecommunications and ICT.
Money transfer
Eng Waweru is an industry insider with deep knowledge on the mobile money transfer segment of the industry. He was at the helm of telecoms industry regulator CCK between 2005 and 2008 when Safaricom was piloting M-Pesa in Kenya and after the service officially launched in to the market. Waweru has also worked with Telkom Kenya as managing director in the past.
Other officials that the bank has hired in the recent past as it prepares for the roll out of mobile money network include John Staley, who is the chief officer finance, innovation and technology.
He has previously worked as chief executive at Credit Indemnity (Pty) Ltd in South Africa before joining Equity Bank. He has been actively involved in the use of mobile phones to provide financial service since 1998.
Enrico Nora, the executive director mobile innovations, has spent 11 years with Hewlett Packard in various capacity across Western and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific. More recently, he was based in Singapore as chief finance officer and chief operating officer of Docomo Intertouch, a division of NTT Docomo of Japan. Within the Equity Group he now leads the mobile banking program.
Extensive experience
Raphael Hukai chief information officer joined Equity in December 2013. Mwangi said Hukai, who has extensive experience in insurance and e-commerce, had worked with IBM Corporation for about 16 years as well as leading banks around the world. Ignacio Mas is also part of the team supporting mobile banking.
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate, Mas has in the past been Deputy Director in the Financial Services for the Poor program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a Senior Advisor at the Technology Program at CGAP.
He has also worked with the Vodafone Group as director of global business strategy.
The bank also recently hired Mary Gicharu who has in the past worked with American financial services firm Morgan Stanley is also part of the mobile banking support team.
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