Nib International Bank (NIB) has initiated a massive expansion of its digital banking system and infrastructure with an estimated investment of 350 million Br. With the latest expansion, the Bank will upgrade its core banking solution and kickoff new digital banking products.

The two-decade-old Bank began the expansion following the recommendations forwarded by KPMG East Africa Limited, a firm that was hired to design and formulate the management strategy. The Bank hired the company two years ago for an estimated 20 million Br to design a five-year strategic plan, a 10-year strategic road map, and to study the organisational restructuring of Nib.

One of the pillars of the strategy is aggressively working on digital banking, according to Assefa Yeshanew, vice president of Nib in charge of information systems. The strategy has two documents, namely a diagnosis report and a way forward that recommends a digital transformation, according to him.

Outlined by five major components, the Bank plans to complete the digital transformation in two years. The board of directors of the Bank, chaired by Woldetensai W. Giorgis, approved the budget for the projects.

"We're heading to virtual and self serve banking services," said Assefa. "We're getting closer to our customers."

The major part of the expansion is upgrading the core banking solution, which networks the Bank's services and branches. Expected to be operational in four months, the core banking solution dubbed "T24 Version 2020" was supplied by Temenos Group, a Geneva-based software provider that specialises in enterprise software for banks and financial service firms.

United System Integrators (USI), a local firm, implemented T24, making Nib the fifth bank to have the latest version. So far, Bank of Abyssinia, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, Cooperative Bank of Oromia and the Development Bank of Ethiopia have upgraded their core banking to the latest version.

"We used a latecomer advantage in employing the latest version," said Assefa.

The core banking solution, which integrated the 320 branches of the Bank, replaces the eight-year-old digital system that was supplied by Temenos itself. The old system, dubbed Star Bank, was supplied by Eta-Info Tech, a Dubai-based software company in 2006.

Started four months ago, the process of integrating the new solution is being undertaken by the project office of the Bank, whose 38 team members currently reside in a building of the Bank located in Arat Kilo. Nib procured the building three years ago for 680 million Br.  The entire integration and testing process is expected to take eight months.

Nib's upgraded core banking solution covers financial intelligence, mobile and internet banking, the customer relationship management system and interest-free banking. It went through the initiation stage, system analysis, building stage and cloud installation.

"It'll enable us to transact with third-party payment aggregators seemlessly," Assefa told Fortune.