South Africa’s largest medical insurer, Discovery Health, has launched its much-anticipated banking offering, calling it the “first behavioral bank”.

Launched in 1992, Discovery has differentiated itself by inspiring its members to be more healthy, using its Vitality program where healthier behavior is rewarded in a loyalty system.

For the first time, South Africans are being offered a bank that’s built, from its core, to improve financial behaviors.

Significant progress has been made in developing infrastructure, operating processes and the customer value proposition.

The result is a fully digital bank with app-based transacting and no need for physical branches at all. This all-digital approach offers a level of interaction and personalization that gets people engaged and excited about becoming financially savvy.

Banking accounts

Discovery Bank will offer a basic Discovery 1 account in addition to a comprehensive Discovery 1 Plus product. Discovery 1 will be offered as the bank’s core account, functioning as a fusion of the Discovery credit card and a transactional account.

Customers will earn an interest rate on their account balances and the product also includes a Vitality savings account, into which all the cash-backs and rebates for Vitality will be paid. The Discovery 1 Plus account will include a bundled market-related fee where all transactions will be free.

Additionally, all Discovery Bank payments reflect instantly and the bank offers real-time EFTs to all other banks in addition to third-party payment platforms such as Samsung Pay.

About the implementation project

Discovery decided to implement the SAP S/4HANA Banking solution to realize their plans.

As one of Discovery’s chosen implementation partner, alseda Consulting helped to build up the digitized banking processes in bank accounts, payments and credit cards.

With many years of experience in SAP banking implementation projects, alseda Consulting was able to bring essential experience to the project. Especially with the SAP Deposits Management, SAP Payment Engine and SAP Credit Card Management applications.

The highly successful implementation provided Discovery Bank with an integrated and sustainable banking platform to confidently move forward into the company’s future.