“Operational excellence has been talked about for many years now but the time is now for action. There is no tomorrow, Operational excellence should be taken as profession in the today’s financial service world. It is not a one off activity to do every few years.
It should be part of daily life, must become the DNA of every banking and financial service institution today globally. Another important element which should be part and parcel of the DNA of every financial service organization is Innovation.
Banks and Financial service institutions need to innovate today more than ever before which will again help in diversifying. Through innovation and diversifying in profitable ventures will help utilizing the available resources more optimally , there by promoting operational excellence. I will bring the example of how non telecom companies are venturing in to MVNO , leveraging on available customer base in the existing business and infrastructure of existing telecom operator , eliminating the cost of setting up of huge telecom infrastructure.” - Raj Singh, Chief Operating Officer - Chase Bank (Kenya).

Raj Singh is one of the key speakers for the 3rd Annual OPEX in Financial Services- Africa, which is taking place on the 19-20th of August 2014, Hyatt Regency, Johannesburg – South Africa. He will present a dedicated session on
“Building a sustainable Operational Excellence Road Map”, which will focus on defining the necessary steps for preparing for a sustainable operational excellence transformation, conceptualizing long-term business benefits and
developing strong communication channels for a continuous and sustained operational improvements.

In the changing times, operational excellence acts as a strategic differentiator and positions the bank as an execution leader in balancing service quality and effectiveness with cost of delivery by alignment and optimisation of processes, technology and partnerships. Operational excellence provides a direct channel to improve shareholder value, where thoughts and actions are perfectly positioned to deliver transformational results thus generating maximum output for a bank, cost effectively and by retaining customer loyalty and maintaining stakeholder relationship of the bank.

One of the key highlight of this conference is the Exclusive COO Panel, entitled as “Metrics for successful business operations”, which will be joined by Wonder Nyabereka, COO - Barclays Bank (Zimbabwe); Raj Singh, COO – Chase Bank (Kenya); Lawson Naibo, COO - Bank of Kigali (Rwanda); Rob Formby, Director - Retail Operations - Allan Gray.

Thomas Gachie, Director of Operations - National Bank (Kenya) will present a special casestudy featuring NBK's Business Operational Excellence Framework. Striving for Operational Excellence – The CIO perspective, will be elaborated by Pete Novat, Chief Information and Operating Officer - National Microfinance Bank (Tanzania).

Sponsored by Smartstream (Platinum Sponsor), Newgen Software( Associate Sponsor), DST Global Solutions (Technology Partner) and SunGard ( Exhibitor), this conference will provide an unique opportunity to learn and interact directly with COOs, CIOs and operation excellence specialists and technologists who will share and determine the importance of operational excellence across all banking processes.