Co-operative Bank’s mobile and agency banking channels have proved to be efficient alternatives to traditional banking models.

This was evident following the release of the bank’s third quarter financial results last week. During the results, Co-operative Bank announced that it had posted an impressive net profit of Sh. 10.5 billion in the third quarter of its current financial year.

According to a statement to Bizna Kenya’s newsroom, over 87 per cent of customer transactions migrated to alternative channels leading to impressive channel optimization by the end of the quarter. “The versatile Mco-op Cash Mobile Wallet has continued to play a pivotal role in the growth of non-funded income with over 3.03 Million customers,” said Co-op Bank.

Subsequently, Co-op Bank has been able to move 63 per cent of its staff from tellers to front-office sales roles. This has effectively cut the average queue time from 27 minutes to 9 minutes within one year.

“Operational efficiencies resulting from the Transformation project have seen our Cost-to-Income Ratio improve from a high of 53.2 per cent in Dec 2015 to 47.1 per cent in September 2016,” the bank said in the statement.

Under its flagship MCo-op Cash mobile platform, Co-op Bank has seen the number of loans mobile loans grow by 130 per cent whil the number of subscribers has increased by 20 per cent over the past one year.

By July this year, the mobile app had already signed up three million users on the Android App. MCo-op Cash mobile app allows users to access on-net and inter-bank cash transfers, and pay utility bills. Currently, Co-op bank customers are not charged to make transactions on-net while using the application. Interestingly while using the application, borrowers can get up to 150 per cent of their net salary.

Currently, the bank has 8,765 Co-op Kwa Jirani Banking Agents and over 570 ATMs, and 145 official bank branches. It also has over 6.1 million account holders.