Prezence Digital, one of Africa’s most prominent full-service digital agencies, has been recognised by Retail Banker International for their Standard Bank Student Loan mobile campaign.
 
Retail Banker International is a UK-based publication read by financial leaders across the globe, and has for the past 27 years sponsored one the world’s most prestigious banking awards. This year some 300 nominations were received in 22 categories, among them Best Mobile Banking Strategy. Prezence Digital’s Standard Bank Student Loan mobile campaign was named as one of 5 category finalists from entries submitted from numerous countries and was one of two South African companies that made it to the final in this category.
 
“We are extremely honoured to have received such recognition for our innovative use of digital,” said Robert Latham, Head of Youth Banking in Standard Banks’ personal and business banking division.
 
The move to mobilising the application process has resulted in an improvement of 80% of end-to-end processing on loans. In January 2012 alone, application volumes represented 90% of the total year targets and a 300% year-on-year increase.
 
Prezence Digital delivered a seamless mobile application process where students could apply for their loans in less than 10 minutes.
 
“The main focus was to deliver a convenient and user-friendly platform that provides all the functionality students need right at their fingertips,” said Prezence Digital Chief Technology Officer Tim Bishop.
 
To make the application process as seamless and as user-friendly as possible the system used on the mobi-site can automatically adapt successive questions based on the answer provided in previous questions. Once all the information has been submitted, the system automatically calculates the loan amount for which the applicant is eligible and offers applicants the opportunity to make any required changes. A GPS tracking tool built into the mobi-site allows student