Access Bank Plc begins an upgrade of its core banking application (CBA), Flexcube by Oracle. As a result, branches will close earlier today and digital channels will be affected over the weekend.
“Our branches will close early at 2pm and all other internal processing systems will be shut down by 5pm on Friday, February 21, 2025,” according to an internal memo seen by Condia.
The bank intends to spend the weekend on the upgrade. “Our digital channels will be temporarily unavailable on: Saturday, February 22, 2025, from 2:00am to 3:00am [and] Sunday, February 23, 2025 2:00am to 1:00pm.”
The bank declined to comment on any part of the story.
Sources familiar with the project said the upgrade of the Flexcube platform has been in the works for two years. In October 2024, Access Bank, GTBank and other banks notified customers of a decision to embark on technology upgrades.
Unfortunately, GTBank’s upgrade left a bad taste as customers suffered prolonged service disruption. The disruption was somewhat expected as the bank was transitioning to an entirely new CBA, Finacle.
Instead, Access Bank will be looking to upgrade its long-serving CBA to accommodate new features following rapid expansion.
Read: Access Bank expands to Malta following regulatory approval
Access Bank’s first major CBA upgrade happened in 2019
This is not the first time the bank will be making a major upgrade. After its 2018 acquisition of Diamond Bank, Access Bank’s volume surged. By December 2019, Customer deposits hit ₦4.26 trillion, a 66% annual growth rate that was 4x its average. Post-merger, Access Bank had 36 million customers and suffered long reconciliatory processes that now took 24 hours. Long End of Month (EOM) processes are unacceptable for a bank operating with millions of customers and transactions.
So, in 2019, it consulted JMR Infotech, an Indian-headquartered company that offers System Integration services for platforms like Oracle’s FLEXCUBE. The technology provider helped to reduce the EOM time to 10.5 hours.
While there has been no hugely-publicised upgrade since then, the bank’s current status makes one due.
Between 2019 and 2024, Access has nearly doubled its customer base to over 60 million. Thanks to its aggressive growth and expansion plans which have led to operations in 23 markets and 28,000 employees. For context, in 2019 Access Bank had less than 7,000 employees.
Our insider sources revealed that this upgrade aims to consolidate the vast amounts of customer data the bank has accumulated.
While challenges are possible, they expressed optimism that a phased approach and the number of staff committed to the project will minimise customer impact.
Still, customers need to take heed for the time being and plan accordingly.
Editor’s note: Added additional context around the first major upgrade and stats on the bank’s operations
