HARNESSING SY N E R GY W I T H SY B R I N Bringing financial inclusion to the developing world, Sybrin is Africa’s preferred software partner. We decipher digital transformation and continual innovation with Group CEO, Marius Mare Writer: Phoebe Harper | Project Manager: Josh Hyland 2 | Africa Outlook issue 96
SYBRIN TECHNOLOGY
vision - the reason we are in business,” he shares. Combining this passion with purpose, Sybrin is the tech company to make finance accessible, and inclusive, accelerating Africa’s digital transformation one customer at a time. “From a financial industry perspective, our purpose at Sybrin is to contribute to financial inclusion across the continent. We’re looking for ways to make it easier, cheaper and safer,” continues Mare.
MAKING WAVES
YES Programme AI coaches
The advent of globalisation and digitisation has placed businesses under increasing pressure to do more, with less. “We are witnessing an information technology renaissance in Africa, and I am excited to play my part.” The opening words of Marius Mare, Group CEO of digital finance superstar Sybrin, encapsulate the dynamism and force of digitalisation as it makes waves across the continent. For Mare, it is the social currency that technology carries, and its power
to bring about positive societal change, that drew him to the industry. Indeed, this personal mission resonates entirely with Sybrin’s own raison d’être, which has driven the company’s operations for over 30 years. “Digital transformation is a subject that deeply resonates with me, not only as the Group CEO of a tech company, but also in its ability to bring about positive change on our continent. “It is at the very core of Sybrin’s mission statement for its purpose and
Since inception, Sybrin has continued to cement an expansive footprint in line with consumer shifts in the digital realm. “We are currently seeing a significant increase in the number of digitisation initiatives – driven by key factors such as increased demand from customers to interact digitally with their service providers, an increase in regulatory requirements, an explosion of cybercrime, and the need to shift cost-to-income ratios,” Mare explains. As the company expands to accommodate a burgeoning digital appetite, it has recorded a consistent growth rate of over 30 percent yearon-year and has accumulated over 250 employees along the way. “We are rapidly expanding to best serve our growing customer base,” he adds. The company’s portfolio encompasses clearing and payments, account opening, digital identity, anti-money laundering, risk rating, and business digitisation solutions. All Sybrin offerings are developed on a modern Rapid Application Development (RAD) platform, allowing customers flexibility to adapt and evolve their services in a configurable fashion. In addition to software solutions, the company also offers system integration and solution support services throughout Africa Outlook issue 96 | 3
Financial services technology for an ever-evolving world
Our microservices can be grouped in a huge variety of ways – with each other and seamlessly with other systems. Embrace lean, agile and continuous integration and deployment practices.
BancX is a true API-first, cloud-based, microservices architecture, overcoming many limitations of legacy software architecture. Combine and configure functionality across onboarding, savings, lending, KYC, payments, ledgers, reporting, messaging, and 3rd party integrations.
Key industries While the BancX platform can serve a huge array of industries, there are a narrower group of markets that can really benefit from our solution.
Banks Existing, new, neo and everything in between.
Retailers Embedded financial services are the future and we’re enabling that future.
Mobile network operators Communication technology is evolving rapidly and financial services are key.
Fintechs We’re a fintech too! We’d love to build with you.
Lenders SMME, corporate, BNPL or niche, we are geared to unlock value for you.
BancX is a modular, cloud-based infrastructure platform, designed to build, configure, launch and scale financial services.
The functionally rich, pre-integrated services in our platform allow you to build, configure and launch in record time. Build your own front end or choose one of our fast-start solutions.
Limit upfront Capex, reduce ongoing maintenance, integration and staffing costs. BancX allows you to pilot, launch and scale cost-effectively.
Customer Success Partnering with BancX enabled Float to build a next-gen, market-first Fintech platform, with beautiful product design and user experience at its core. By fulfilling our requirements for a flexible, cutting-edge core banking and payments system, BancX helped to radically accelerate our time to market and significantly decreased our capex outlay.” Alex Forsyth-Thompson Founder - Float
info@bancx.com | bancx.com A RFS company
SYBRIN TECHNOLOGY
15 countries spanning both Africa and Southeast Asia. “Today, businesses need to be leaner and smarter - and are expected to fulfil their customers’ requests instantly; we can help them achieve this in an easier and more affordable way.” To date, Sybrin has sold more than 800 systems across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Its solutions are
currently deployed in 20 countries worldwide with active expansion into new territories top of the agenda. But despite this international presence, Africa remains the company’s true heartland. “A major differentiator is the fact that our solutions are developed here in Africa, so we understand the local market’s needs. Our regional in-country support teams provide services in the language and culture of our customers.”
A LEGACY OF INNOVATION On the African digital landscape, Sybrin has established a reputation as an industry innovator, bolstered by its decades of experience in the sector. WO R L D P R E S C E N C E
AFRICA OUTLOOK: WHAT MAJOR PROJECTS ARE SYBRIN CURRENTLY WORKING ON? MARIUS MARE, GROUP CEO: “To mention just a few, we are working with the government authorities within some of our regions to establish the concept of “Decentralised- or Self Sovereign Identity”. In short, this means that everyone’s identity is managed in the blockchain using various credentials - and the ultimate benefit to each citizen is that they own their identity and thus mitigate the need for repetitive Know-Your-Customer (KYC) processes. “Elsewhere, we are working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create an open-source Transaction Fraud Monitoring solution which will be key in governing mobile person-to-person (P2P) money transfers. These solutions are aimed at creating financial inclusion across all developing countries.”
6 | Africa Outlook issue 96
“We are one of the pioneers of digital finance on the continent, having implemented the first cheque truncation system in Africa,” Mare tells us proudly. “Sybrin has invested significantly over the last few years in innovating our offerings.” The latest move in this area is embodied by Sybrin’s foray into passive biometric liveness detection, which is currently being trialled on smartphones. “This is a very exciting development here at Sybrin,” says Mare. “We are proud to say that our Liveness Detection solution underwent rigorous testing, by an accredited FIDO Alliance Lab, to conform to
The BancX Partnership Programme Our partner programme is tiered depending on the level of involvement. We work with a variety of businesses that cover referrals, resellers, distributors, implementation partners, and professional services. In tandem with your team, we’ll engage your client to deliver business results through our flexible financial services platform, backed by professional services and support teams.
Delivering on our promise to customers through collaboration with partners drives our mutual success. Grow your business with ours. Marius Maré, CEO of Sybrin weighs in on the partnership with BancX: “As the financial services landscape evolves further into digital banking and software-as-a-service with Sybrin as a major player in Africa, we have selected a number of specialised partners who are leaders in their respective fields to deliver value to our customers. BancX, whose offering covers both SaaS and BaaS, has proven an excellent fit for us in the FinTech space.”
Fund* goes live in record time The Fund is a collaboration between several multinational manufacturers in South Africa. It aims to facilitate transformation across a particular sector’s value chain by providing access to developmental funding, market access, and capacity development for qualifying black-owned entities. The Fund needed to, very quickly, put a loan origination and management system in place in order to start distributing loans.
* Client details withheld for compliance reasons
Find out more about the BancX partnership programme and how we can grow together. Contact info@bancx.com
In response, Sybrin called on BancX to provide a “fast start” implementation of its financial services platform. The fast start comprises a front end with pre-configured user journeys that connect to the microservices backend. The system went live in 2 weeks, giving the Fund a fully functional, cloud-based platform to create and manage loans in record time. The Fund continues to grow off of the foundational BancX platform in its pursuit of operational excellence.
SYBRIN TECHNOLOGY
D I G I TA L E M P I R E
ISO/IEC 30107-3 and meet globally recognised performance standards for biometric recognition. Our solution successfully passed the tests by detecting level A and B attacks from 10 Presentation Attack Instruments (PAIs), including paper masks, reconstructed faces on busts, videos, live persons, and more. “Our combined use of image processing techniques and neural networks for passive liveness detection allows us to return a result in less than half a second using only a selfie, resulting in a frictionless user experience.” This latest venture is set to open doors for various industries, including finance, insurance, telecommunications, crypto, travel, marketplaces, vehicle rental, gaming, and esports to name but a few. But progress doesn’t stop there. In a world where digitisation is accelerating rapidly whilst facing a shortage of developers, continual innovation is essential. Sybrin’s RAD platform in this fast-paced realm is instrumental, by increasing 8 | Africa Outlook issue 96
speed-to-market by up to five times. “As a software solutions provider, we need to keep innovating and provide our markets with solutions that are relevant in the everchanging business and technology environments. “From a business perspective, we are obviously seeing the need to digitise - this then automatically creates the requirement for solutions such as digital identity, regulatory technologies, onboarding, etc. From a technology perspective, we need to keep abreast of advances such as cloud, blockchain, and RAD.”
FUTURE SYNERGY For the immediate future, Sybrin’s priorities are clear in the rollout of its innovative products that harness the capabilities of modern technology and deliver it to the masses. “Over the next 12 to 18 months, a key objective of ours is to enable our customers to take advantage of these solutions in their own digitisation journeys. We are also expanding into new markets which will require
significant attention. “In addition, our new owners also provide new synergies that need to be explored over the next 12 months.” As the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) revolution continues to run its course, this endless excitement, passion for the limitless potential of technology and its power in furthering society whilst levelling the playing field, will continue to propel both Mare, and by default, Sybrin, long into the future. “I was very excited to join Sybrin and be given the opportunity to contribute to 4IR on the African continent.” On Africa’s digital journey, Sybrin stands as a partner of choice.
SYBRIN Tel: +27 11 367 6900 sales@sybrin.com marketing@sybrin.com www.sybrin.com
SYBRIN TECHNOLOGY
10 years of IT Solutions & Services through Strategic Partnerships
The 4th Industrial Revolution is a reality we cannot wish away, and the business environment and technological advancements come with huge risks. One of the biggest risks is Cyber security. In order to mitigate these risks organizations will need to deploy the best strategies and technologies to secure data. Hosi Technologies understands that business requires highly complex systems to address the risks of Cyber Security to secure data and protect the business’ reputation in the market, including Data Availability, Data Integrity and Data Confidentiality. The Hosi Information Security team, together with our strategic technology partners, provides the best tools, skills and processes in order to address your information security requirements.
Northern Cape · Limpopo · Eastern Cape · Free State · KwaZulu-Natal · Mpumalanga · North West · Cape Town, South Africa · Gauteng Get in touch: +27 (0) 11 023 1995 | info@hosi.co.za | hosi.co.za
Africa Outlook issue 96 | 9
SYBRIN Ground Floor, Building C, Monte Circle, 20 Montecasino Boulevard, Fourways, 2191, Johannesburg, Gauteng, RSA Tel: +27 11 367 6900 sales@sybrin.com marketing@sybrin.com www.sybrin.com
PRODUCED BY AFRICA OUTLOOK MAGAZINE