The use of banking agents will help to reduce the operating costs of the sector. The recent development in mobile phone banking is highly encouraging. The expansion in the retail network of microfinance has arisen overwhelmingly from agents and mobile phone channels. Within a span of just two years, there are now almost 18,000 branchless banking outlets surpassing the 10,000 conventional bank branches.
Ideally, FIs need risk IT systems that can gather risk information quickly and comprehensively, producing global, cross-product, cross-legal entity estimates of their exposures promptly. Unfortunately, few global FIs are capable of this. They are hampered by legacy systems that are inefficient, costly, and burdensome.