FNB popular in Africa

In its most recent survey of web users, Alexa (www.alexa.com) noted that FNB was among the top 10 websites in Africa and most popular banking website on the continent.
FNB Namibia’s CEO Ian Leyenaar commented on this achievement: “FNB Namibia, as one of the largest FNB operations outside of South Africa, is proud to be part of this FNB Group and we know that our website is also an extremely user-friendly and popular one in Namibia.”
Typically, national or regional news-based websites dominate the top 10 website. As a specialised banking site, primarily aimed at the bank’s customers, FNB’s achievement is remarkable. FNB South Africa has over 2.8 million unique visitors to their website each month. This indicates that a very large number of non-FNB customers visit the site for information as FNB SA has 1.3m online banking customers.
FNB said that they are planning an exciting re-launch of the site in July, with an increased focus on a much richer information offering for both visitors and for their customers. “Post login, FNB customers will find detailed financial information and much wider transactional ability,” says Leyenaar.
FNB said it is ultimately driving towards a level of online functionality that will make it possible for their customers to bypass the need for branch interaction. The bank also said it plans to have customers who purely interact with the bank via digital channels.
Currently, FNB offers customers the ability to change their username and password and change ATM limits, all online. Many of these were previously branch-based functions.
Says Leyenaar: “We carefully balance online user friendliness with security. FNB adopts a multi-layered approach to security and further offers its customers free anti-phishing and anti-malware software. We operate a range of behind-the-scenes monitoring software to create automatic alerts and these are actioned by our Online security team.
“In future, digital banking will become increasingly textured with intuitive ease of operation. Online banking customers have expectations that continually evolve. Winning this award indicates we are on the right path and we will continue to evolve FNB Online Banking,” adds Leyenaar.