Vol. 19 No. 6 October 2020 `75 Pages 52

Magma Fincorp pg 8 3D Economy pg 16 Merge & Surge pg 32 Gayatri Coop Bank pg 41 www.bankingfrontiers.com www.bankingfrontiers.live CREATIVE DATA

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FCBA 2020 FRONTIERS IN COOPERATIVE BANKING AWARDS Rising to Nnew rmal NCBS & FCBA Awards Conference

The world has redefined itself and is not going to be the same again. The Cooperative sector which has undergone a sea of change in the past few months is today forced to look into totally new realms of business in this digital world aided by social distancing. Welcome to the world of New Normal and it calls for out of the box strategies to rework the people, products, processes and technology strategies to ensure survival and Growth of the sector. Needless to say, FCBA 2020 the 14th Edition of your favourite FCBA Awards and the National co-operative Banking summit is scheduled to be held Digitally to be in line with the New Normal keeping in mind the safety and wellbeing of the sector and the participants. We have chosen to make it Digital and global.

Date: 11 - 12 December 2020 Time: 11:00 am - 06:00 pm

For detail please contact: Wilhelm Singh +91 - 773 838 7634 [email protected] Kailash Purohit +91 - 916 779 4613 [email protected] Editor’s Blog Manoj Agrawal Mobile : 98673 66111 Email : [email protected]

October 2020 - Vol. 19 No. 6

Group Publisher : Babu Nair Group Editor : Manoj Agrawal Editor : N. Mohan

Editorial New Unicorns Coming Mehul Dani, Ravi Lalwani, V. Raghuraman or the past several decades, the trend Research Editors has been to buy ready made software V. Babu, Ratnakar Deole, products that fit the business needs, W.A. Wijewardena, Sanchit Gogia, F and then make modifications or additions as K.C. Shashidhar, Dr L.S. Subramanian, required. This has yielded a huge amount of Ajay Kumar operational efficiency and improved control. Advisor-Alliances In fact, this methodology made technology Ateeq Siddique the DNA of banks. In the recent mergers Marketing among PSU banks, technology synergy was Kailash Purohit, Dhiraj Mestry, the main consideration. If these mergers had Dhara Thobani, Rohit Kahar happened a decade or two ago, considerations Events & Operations about business synergies would have been Shirish Joshi, Stalin Saldhana, the foremost. In today’s era, technology synergy is leading business synergy. Pramod Jadhav, Ashish Verma, Will technology dictate future synergies as well? What is observed these days is that Wilhelm Singh, Sneha Agrawal, Samata Mestry, Ramesh Vishwakarma the focus is shifting from operational efficiency to customer appeasement and since there is a diversity of customers, the technology choices are also becoming diverse. Design And that has become the mantra of digital transformation. While technology Somnath Roy Choudhury transformation was defined by the destination, digital transformation is a journey, Published By a never-ending journey. Glocal Strategies & Services D-312, Twin Arcade, Military Road, Marol, As each bank chooses its own direction in this journey, the trend is gradually Andheri (E), Mumbai 400059, India. shifting from buying ready to use packaged software towards developing more and Tel: +91-22-29250166 / 29255569 more systems inhouse, particularly the customer facing systems. Low code systems, Fax: +91-22-29207563 DevOps and others enablers are also facilitating this transition among banks. And since banks are accelerating on the journey of digital transformation, they have lesser patience to wait for the software vendors to develop the desired features. Printed & Published by Babu Nair on And then comes machine learning, where for all practical purposes, the training behalf of Glocal Strategies & Services and Printed at Indigo Presss (India) Pvt Ltd., data develops the software. Plot No. 1C/716, Off Dadoji Konddeo Cross Clearly, banks have become technology companies themselves. While technology Road, Between Sussex and Retiwala Indl. was their operational DNA, now it is also their growth DNA, and for this they Estate, Byculla (E), Mumbai 400027. will need new kinds of technology partners, and these could include cloud Editor: Manoj Agrawal (Responsible for specialists, data management specialists, security specialists, business continuity selection of news under PRB Act) specialists, etc. The decade ahead promises to be exciting for those coming up with innovative ways to support the BFSI sector’s new approach towards technological transformation. I am eagerly looking to see the new unicorns.

Banking Frontiers October 2020 3 N E W S Regulator

7 central banks publish report on CBDCs RTGS facility will be Seven central banks along with the Bank for International Settlements available 24 hours have come out with a report identifying The Reserve Bank of India is proposing the foundational principles necessary to start round-the-clock availability for any publicly available Central Bank of real-time gross settlement (RTGS) Digital Currencies (CBDCs) to help facility from December 2020 for swift central banks meet their public policy payments. Governor Shaktikanta Das said objectives. The 7 central banks involved while announcing the Monetary Policy in the compilation of the report are the Committee’s decisions that this step will Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, improve the ease of doing operations. the Bank of Japan, the European He said India will be among very few Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, countries globally with a 24x7x365 large Sveriges Riksbank and the Swiss National Bank. BIS said the report highlights three value real-time payment system. As of key principles for a CBDC: now, RTGS is available on all days when u Coexistence with cash and other types of money in a flexible and innovative bank branches are functioning, (including payment system. those Saturdays when banks are open). u Any introduction should support wider policy objectives and do no harm to The minimum amount allowed to be monetary and financial stability. remitted through RTGS is `200,000 and u Features should promote innovation and efficiency. there is no upper limit. Based on these principles, the group has identified the core features of any future CBDC system, which must be: u Resilient and secure to maintain operational integrity. u Convenient and available at very low or no cost to end users. Saudi Arabia introduces u Underpinned by appropriate standards and a clear legal framework. new polymer note u Have an appropriate role for the private sector, as well as promoting competition and innovation. Chinese central bank does digital currency transactions The People’s Bank of China said the sovereign digital currency it has developed has been used for transactions worth more than 1.1 billion yuan (US$162 million) as part pilot programs. The central bank’s Deputy Governor Fan Yifei, speaking at the Sibos Conference, said some 3.13 million transactions have been processed using the currency, which has been undergoing tests for the last one year. These transactions have been done in major cities in the country. He said the pilot programs made Saudi Arabia has issued a new polymer positive progress, with more than 6,700 use cases implemented as of late August banknote of Riyal 5 denomination, the Saudi for transactions ranging from bill payments and transport to government services. Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) said. He added that the central bank regards digital renminbi as an important financial This is a step towards developing a new infrastructure for the future. The currency is being used for multiple payment national currency, the central bank said, methods, including bar code, facial recognition and tap-and-go transactions. The explaining that the new note is made of Chinese government also used e-yuan red packets, in cooperation with the Shenzhen materials that contain ‘security technologies’ government, to reward about 5000 medical and health care workers involved in the and material that make it ‘safe and more treatment of covid. environmentally friendly’. The note is also made to withstand different conditions, Sri Lanka launches LANKAQR initiative such as different temperatures and moisture, The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has launched the national LANKAQR initiative, aimed not to be damaged when folded and is also at moving the country towards a less-cash society. LANKAQR code was introduced resistant to dirt. The central bank said the by the central bank together with licensed financial institutions and LankaClear with components used in the note are from Saudi the aim of moving towards a less-cash society while increasing financial inclusion in petrochemical materials. The design of the the country. LANKAQR enables customers to make payments directly from their new note includes on its face a picture of the bank accounts to accounts of merchants or service providers, using payment apps of King Salman and a picture of the Shaybah LANKAQR certified financial institutions. The central bank said this is a low-cost field in the Empty Quarter, in addition to digital payment solution, which targets small and medium enterprises especially. the shape of the transparent window that Customers will not be charged for using LANKAQR-based payments. Merchants contains motifs inspired by the logo of Saudi are provided with the LANKAQR printed sticker free of charge by the member Vision 2030. The back of the paper includes a institutions of LANKAQR to be displayed at their places of business. view of wildflowers from the Kingdom.

4 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Pandemic Fallout Digital KYC can handle 20x applications a day The associated cost to process credit card and loan applications by banks has come down significantly:

ankBazaar was one of the first tele-medicine, banking cannot afford fintechs to realize the advantage to be left behind. Financial institutions, Bof digital KYC and partner with regulators, and the government need to leading banks and credit card issuers work together to stay one step ahead so to facilitate contactless access to credit that the impact of any future disruption cards. Adhil Shetty, CEO of the firm, in services is minimal and financial believes that contactless access to credit services remain accessible at all times.” - meaning no meetings or paperwork - is the new normal, providing a way for SURVEY: GO DIGITAL consumers to access financial products in One tough lesson that the pandemic a safe and secure manner. “At BankBazaar, taught everyone is that there is crucial contactless solutions from partners are need to ensure that financial services live and these have been launched in May remain accessible digitally at all times. 2020 during the slowdown. To me, this is This June, BankBazaar surveyed 1112 a ground-breaking milestone for Indian customers on the impact of covid on their industry and lays the foundation for the personal finance management, and Shetty future of credit delivery to every Indian says: “The results are clear - save more, consumer,” he says. spend less, stay at home and go digital.” Adhil Shetty foresees a clear- Financial priorities have become VIDEO KYC’S SUCCESS cut case for contactless finance more conservative in the post-covid BankBazaar has seen measurable success world as discretionary spending falls, in the use of video KYC by partner everything that BankBazaar does. For and savings and investment and debt banks for identity verification in credit example, says Shetty, marketing activities repayments take precedence for most applications during covid. The video KYC are almost entirely online and it will people. “This situation is expected to solutions facilitated by the firm resulted continue to remain so for the near future. continue in the near future,” predicts in a steep fall in the time required by the Shetty, “as financial uncertainties mount partner banks to process the submitted DIGITAL LENDING: 100% GROWTH due to pay cuts and job losses globally. applications. This led to a 20x increase With digital operations becoming Even when the economy begins recovery, in the number of applications each extremely critical for the BFSI sector, spending patterns may never be entirely partner bank could process per day due Shetty points out that lenders are the same as before, primarily, due to the to benefits of digital KYC compared to predicting close to 100% growth in impact of social distancing on the way we the offline KYC process. digital lending by the end of this year. consume everything from food to travel The use of digital KYC frees up Digital KYC solutions make this vision to entertainment.” valuable time and resources that would both achievable and cost-effective, otherwise have been spent in travelling and BankBazaar is at the forefront of DIGI TRANSACTIONS UP and document collection, allowing the facilitating these solutions for partner Consumers were increasingly turning to lenders to reduce costs and increase banks, sys he. online finance even before the pandemic efficiency, maintains Shetty, adding: “As “The lockdown slowed down the because of the convenience factor. a result, the banks’ associated cost to sector as well as our own plans for Points out Shetty: “With the lockdown process credit card and loan applications EBITDA profitability in March, but with making social distancing a way of life, has come down significantly, while the the interest in and support for digital consumption has moved online, with reach of these products has expanded KYC solutions on the rise, we are looking wallet share of online transactions for to cover anyone in India with a mobile to hit that mark by the end of this year,” more than 63% of respondents seeing a phone and internet services. Digital he says. rise during this period. However, social KYC provides significant time and cost Shetty sounds very optimistic distancing and safety concerns have advantage, making it an indispensable when he says: “We see a clear-cut case forced people to rethink face-to-face alternative.” for contactless finance. As customer interactions and move completely online Being an online digital marketplace, preference for contactless digital services for all their credit needs.” technology has been the backbone of moves from shopping to education to [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 5 Process Automation From Mobile Sales App to Platform In the new avatar, the app can be looked upon as one integrated power hub, helping the field sales to meet their numbers:

he power of digitized sales process service, is self-contained, independently enabled via mobile application deployable, organized and lightweight. Tbuilt on robust mobile platforms is Anjana Rao says the app is device agnostic now known to all. The benefits are instant and it does not require to be installed on shift to a paperless process resulting in tablets / device provided by company. All reductions in the turn-around time and services are exposed via an API gateway, improvement in sales productivity. which acts as a single, unified API entry IndiaFirst Life Insurance Co launched point across one or more internal APIs its first mobile sales app 4 years ago. Today, to ensure that the system is scalable the obvious benefits realized, according and can be extended / integrated with to Anjana Rao, Chief Strategy Officer, various channels including third party 95% paperless sales process and cutting aggregators, banks, corporate agents, etc. down on the processing times which has helped enhance sales productivity. “Our EASE: ADOPTION, NAVIGATION mobile sales app, in line with our digital She maintains that the goal has always strategy, is designed to accomplish all been to identify synergies between the activities related to sales and servicing. It underlying device’s abilities and with encompasses automation of the end-to- emerging technologies and infuse the end sales process from target allocation to Anjana Rao emphasizes that solution in relevant steps in the overall target planning, activity management, lead the attempt is to diminish the process to create a positive impact on management and sales fulfilment for all the sales process, which in turn drives channels in online and offline modes. Over front office and back office the acceptance and adoption of the app. last 3-4 years, with increase in adoption boundaries She cites some examples in the and acceptance, enterprise mobile sales accompanying table. apps have become an integral part of the Ease of adoption is a direct outcome armoury of the field sales representative DEVICE AGNOSTIC of the ease of navigation provided by and enterprises,” she says. The system has been built on micro service- the app. “We had a dedicated team based architecture, which facilitates ease to define the UX based on the inputs FIN HEALTH CALCULATOR of reusability and integration. It helps in from stakeholders, including the end IndiaFirst Life Insurance has an inbuilt exposing the application as a collection of users, which helped charting out the financial health calculator in its app, small, autonomous services wherein each journeys,” says Anjana Rao. “Assessing which helps in identifying customers’ financial needs and goals and savings Acvity Priorized Micro Learning required to meet the same. The system Management Acvies has been tuned to identify potential of Video Calls a lead and allocates conversion score so Lead Priorized Performance that high priority leads can be taken up on Management Leads Dashboards priority. Anjana Rao explains: “We have empowered our sales team with a mobile e-Learning solution using which the staff Third Party Sales Underwring Integraons Risk Scores member can learn and gain knowledge Fulfilment Decisions while on the go. Sales representatives have access to a 360-degree view of a customer Contextual Insig hts and can see all their interactions. They have also been enabled to service customers without any dependency on the back office team thus establishing Powered by isights drawn from data relationship for life.”

6 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Device Technology Sales Journey Impact

Camera OCR Third u To read from supporting documents and u Minimize the data entry for sales rep Party pre-fill the form with KYC details u Faster underwriting decisions Integrations u To integrate with third party APIs for u Enhanced STP cases eKYC / PAN / CIBIL scores at POS

Camera / Video AI To carryout liveliness check, instead of u Arrests Frauds uploading customer’s scanned image u Faster Underwriting decisions u Enhances First Time Right percentage

Camera / Video Voice, Speech To conduct a PIVC check at POS u Enhance STP cases to text u Faster underwriting decisions u Reduce mis- selling and free look cancellations Location Tagging AI Daily beat plan Insight on – u Auto tracking of conveyance expenses u Tracking of field reps movements u Risk score for negative locations u Prioritized branches to be visited for lead generation u Prioritized branches to be visited for lead generation

Location Tagging AI AI powered alerts on customers in u Enhances effectiveness of the branch visit vicinity for – and in turn the productivity of the field sales u pending document collection representative u renewal premium collection u Customers likely for an Up Sell / Cross Sell in the vicinity based the prototypes with sample field force IMPROVING PROCESS METRICS pipeline for faster closures. Anjana Rao says and incorporating their feedback also In this transformation journey, the company the attempt is to diminish the front office help in getting it right the first time, has made efforts to bring certain back-end and back office boundaries and make the minimizing cost of rework and having processes like risk scores, underwriting mobile app a robust sales platform that a solution which is intuitive and simple decisions, scrutiny of supporting is equipped to service the customers and and easy to use, thereby helping with documents, etc to the front-end to improve drive the overall productivity levels of field instant adoption without much training the metrics of the sales process like FTR sales - as we get prepped up for the RESET. interventions,” she adds. ratio, quality of the leads, predictive sales [email protected]

USING AI BASED LEARNINGS Another big shift which the insurance Visionary Leadership & The Digital Future company plans is to leverage on the Outstanding Delivery data and use AI based learnings to for Banks provide contextual insights to field sales representative, which are specific to a particular person, related to his territory, leads, pipeline and closures. The aim is Sunita Handa, to move from a zone of generic alerts to Chief General Manager personalized alerts specific to the sales - IT Operations and Deepak Sharma Digital Channels, Chief Digital Officer, rep and have a clear and identified call for State Bank of India Kotak Mahindra Bank action for him. The company is working Summary: As a part of on enabling these alerts throughout the Summary: Sunita the Digital Leadership sales journey to make the overall process Handa discusses the Series, Deepak Sharma, more predictable and effective. important trends and Chief Digital Officer at In the new avatar, the mobile sales areas of focus for banks Kotak Mahindra Bank, app can be looked upon as one integrated in the light of the explains the new realms of apps in the banking world and how they power hub, helping the field sales current situation and her vision for the future. She also shares her wish are redefining the experience for all to meet their numbers and enable list as a digital leader. classes of customers across age groups seamless end to end fulfilment in a and user profiles. transparent manner.

Banking Frontiers October 2020 7 Evolving Business Models Changing Landscape of Mortgages Industry Migrant homecoming is revving up native town economies:

lobal financial systems are reeling He reiterates that the importance of under the onslaught of covid customer connections is unwavering and Gpandemic and the most affected the top most priority. seems to the small-scale businesses, He also believes that while being which have been severely impacted by agile and nimble is the need of the hour, the crisis resulting from lockdowns and it is also equally important to have a financial constraints. Loan moratoriums flexible business architecture with high need to be extended, job losses have quality data aggregation. He says that crossed over 4 million mark and liquidity the last 3 crises which impacted financial seems to be resting with only a prospering services industry were man-made - few while its lack in other major areas is demonetization, GST implementation denting the financial landscape. Of their and now covid-19. The silver lining own volition, banks and NBFCs have that these crises bring about are that tightened the lending norms and are each of these has accelerated the digital reluctant for credit expansions given the journey in the corporate world. Rapid elevated risks. digitization aided by high quality and The initial shock that covid created Manish Jaiswal cheap connectivity is building transaction seems to be waning now. Everyone appears and interaction trails. “Mr Covid 19 to be able to cope with the infection per realm, who are articulating newer (certainly not a teenager) is the new Chief se and there is awareness that vaccine for strategies and his forte is the affordable Technology Officer of most enterprises, masses maybe a far cry. So, businesses housing space and micro, small and which are driving collaboration are getting back on track and the credit medium enterprises. He is steering technologies for contactless or minimal flow in the system is showing a semblance Magma Housing Finance to become an contact transactions, like never before,” of near normal albeit selectively with organization with fintech capabilities he says jocularly. the government providing support for but with a difference, that is, strong on liquidity and offering some schemes ground presence and rich collection CUSTOMER PSYCHOLOGY under Atmanirbhar Bharat. This can infrastructure. He mentions that the Manish Jaiswal says enterprises of the be the beginning of a new era where company is focussed on evolving newer future will focus on specialized niches financial enterprises are rapidly altering and well segmented business models with deeper intelligence. “Organizations their business models. and thus balancing the traditional should have a sharper clarity on whom models with technological supplant. He, to serve and whom to not. It is important CHANGING PARADIGMS however, concedes: “Most credit models to size up one’s deep internal capabilities The financial paradigms are shifting to today are under brutal testing and paving and natural strengths of the organization,” deep reliance on technology to serve more the way for altered lending landscape” he says. clients at a faster pace and to impart more When he discusses the focus of effectiveness to the conventional banking CUSTOMER LEVEL DATA RICHNESS Magma Housing Finance on affordable dominated by human judgement, touch While the combination of data and housing, especially for self-employed and feel. The lenders today, including technologies is helping evolve smarter people in the semi urban and rural the fintechs, are relying on transaction products with agility, the customer and India, he says: “Genealogically, our deep and interaction data trails and online underlying data intelligence around association with hinterland credit spans verifications as they look to bolstering is assuming proprietary proportions, over 3 decades and this helped us to build their credit models and underlying believes Manish Jaiswal. He mentions a relentless focus on this chosen segment. processes. The landscape now includes that as data richness enhances, the We certainly are not strategizing forays self-learning technologies, machine service deliveries will enhance from into high street metro business at the intelligence, big data, agile technologies ‘months to minutes’. He says Magma backdrop of who we basically are.” and all of these are today part of the Housing Finance is a tech-NBFC and According to him deeper data backed WFH model. believes that organizations that connect intelligence about the chosen customer Manish Jaiswal, MD and CEO of emotionally with the customers while segment helps get beneath the veneer and Magma Housing Finance, is among the deploying technology to serve them unravel sciences of consumer psychology business heads in the financial services will gravitate customers exponentially. thus helping build specialization. With

8 Banking Frontiers October 2020 principles of segmentation at the core, he believes that credit analysis should be Complementing Human Intelligence with AI & ML never outsourced while the peripherals anish Jaiswal insists on balancing human intelligence and supplanting it with certainly can be with due protections. Mmachine intelligence. Clarifying, he draws an analogy: “An aircraft’s landing He also stresses that while most financial nowadays is completely on auto-pilot, but still an aeroplane has 2 pilots, because enterprises have a top down business nothing can replace intuitive human intelligence.” architecture approach, the modern- He says data intelligence has patternicity of a vintage or a historical cycle. Most models day CEOs are embracing ground would not have vintage data to build models around covid like centennial events. Credit connectedness and earthy intelligence models certainly help in deselection at early stage of business origination so that human for a continuous learning – unlearning intelligence can be conserved for deeper and more complex credit assessments, he says. - reinvention process with agility and The transition, as he puts it, “is not so much about human intelligence versus nimble footedness. machine intelligence but more about becoming data rich at this stage. Transaction analytics or spend analytics provides sharper insights as compared to spreadsheet- AFFORDABLE HOUSING based projections, which are made on the basis of stale financials of yearly closing.” Manish Jaiswal says WFH adoption is With Indian economy getting data-rich and API integrations on the rise, a revolution now a way of life and has necessitated the in financial space is on the anvil with deep learning and collaborative technologies, he observes. need for one’s own ‘corner office’ in most homes. He describes WFH as ‘Hoffice’ and says it is the new normal. “WFH, Jaiswal, adding lending norms will digitization and intelligence building need for workouts and space for kids’ tighten. “The reverse migration is settling are no more options but a mandate for online education will push people looking down and many have made choices to implementation. While risks are elevated for more spacious homes. Especially so stay put in their native towns and this will currently, the post-moratorium consumer where families have multiple working drive rural demand with need for higher behaviour in his segment, according to him members. The intensity and duration of space per capita. A majority of migrant is encouraging. “The possibility of massive the pandemic will play a seminal role in families are now exploring options to fallout in risk assessment is unlikely. driving up ‘usable square feet in every build an additional room or additional We have a separate vertical for Risk and home’ given the need to accommodate floor and organizations like ours are Analytics in our company,” he says. the altered, digital work and education focussing on personal space expansion from home,” he predicts. in existing homes,” he explains. PASSION AND COMPASSION With 200+ days already into He is of the view that massive Manish Jaiswal reveals that his frontline pandemic and with no certainty of mass unemployment that is prevailing now teams have done a very commendable job vaccination at least for another 12-18 will pave the way for self-employment by ensuring PMAY benefits transmission months, people have accepted to coexist and most of these people will make of over Rs200 million to eligible home with covid as a reality of life and have their humble beginnings from their own loan customers and also extended interest begun to alter business model, he says, Hoffices. The near-term growth is likely subvention of Rs70 million to over 7000 adding: “The financial year 2020-21 will to come from self-construction houses, he MSMEs. Says he: “We are grateful to the be all about survivability and certainly not states, adding: “Given this impetus, our government for such schemes and our profitability. Organizations must have a business is fast getting back to normalcy frontline teams have accessed customers sharp focus on capital conservation.” with over 90% normal collections in physically or digitally to deliver such He expects businesses to shift gears the home loan segment post the end of benefits at the customers’ doorsteps from survival to revival in the latter moratorium period. Our disbursements without them having them to spend half of next financial year and pre-covid are getting closer to pre-covid levels.” anything. The sheer experience of the business level might not return until joy of giving is helping create a culture of March 2022. “The ‘Hoffice’ culture will RISK MANAGEMENT & gratitude towards our customers.” need modularity at homes and also COLLECTIONS When asked whether such schemes individual personal space will get more “Risk mitigation is right at the front and like PMAY which curtail the loan and attention,” he feels. has to be a forte for lending institutions,” thus reduce the earnings and affect overall says Manish Jaiswal, adding: “Proactive profitability, he quips candidly: “Not SELF-CONSTRUCTION IN SMALL steps and intelligence in collections with everything can be measured in numbers! TOWNS predictive models will help assess the Any benefaction which alleviates the Urban dwellers may postpone or even risk much before. You have to stem any loan burden yields goodness, gratitude cancel their home purchase decisions in rot and well in time before it gets deeper and positivity. Good wishes are our best the light of the frail economic conditions, and cut losses much earlier.” intrinsic valuations.” job uncertainties, pay-cuts, says Manish He mentions that investments in data, [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 9 EASE 2.0 Reforms Diverse indicators underscore PSB achievements Improvements in the health of banks and quality of customer service visible:

ndia’s public sector banks have shown a healthy trajectory in their performance Strong progress across themes Iover the 4 quarters since the launch of +37% +56% +26% EASE 2.0 Reforms Agenda, built on the +23% +39% +36% +37% foundation aimed at institutionalizing 69.9 70.2 67.4 64.1 67.1 clean and smart banking. The overall 59.0 58.7 52.1 55.5 49.2 48.2 score of PSBs increased by 37% between 44.9 43.4 42.9 March 2019 and March 2020, with the average EASE index score improving from 49.2 to 67.4 out of 100. Significant progress is seen across 6 themes, with the OverallResponsible Customer Credit o -take PSBs as Deepening FI and Governance highest improvement seen in the themes Banking Responsiveness Udyamimitra Digitalisation and HR for MSMEs of ‘Responsible Banking’, ‘Governance Note: Average scores out of 100. Mar -19 baseline scores revised to ensure comparability March-19 March-20 and HR’, ‘PSBs as Udyamimitra for MSMEs’, and ‘Credit off-take’. PSBs have adopted tech-enabled, Bank won awards in the ‘Top Improvers’ u 23 branch-equivalent services such smart banking in all areas, setting up category basis EASE 2.0 Index. Punjab as account opening, cash deposit, retail and MSME Loan Management National Bank, Union Bank of India cash withdrawal, fund transfer Systems for reduced loan turnaround and Canara Bank were also recognized made available by PSBs through time, PSBloansin59minutes.com and for outstanding performance in select Bank Mitras TReDS for digital lending. These banks themes. u PSBs have issued RuPay credit cards have brought in real-time visibility to to nearly 230 million basic savings retail and MSME customers on the status REFORM ACHIEVEMENTS account customers. of their loans and most branch-based Some of the most noticeable u Significant improvement in customer services are now accessible from home improvements in the banking operations outreach through dedicated marketing and mobiles, including in local languages. achieved post EASE 2.0 reforms are: force and external partnerships. Banking experts agree that EASE u Most PSB customers now have access The number of dedicated marketing Reforms Index has equipped boards to 35+ services such as IMPS, NEFT, employees has increased from 8920 and leadership of banks for effective RTGS, intra-bank transfer, account to 18,053. governance, instituted risk appetite statement, cheque book request on u Sourcing of retail and MSME loans frameworks, created technology- and data- mobile/ internet banking and 23 through the dedicated salesforce and driven risk assessment and prudential services such as cheque book issuance, marketing tie-ups has increased nearly underwriting and pricing systems, cheque status, issuance of form 16A, 5 times from 150,000 to 830,000 loans. introduced Early Warning Signals (EWS) block/activate debit cards through the u Turnaround time (weighted average) systems and specialized monitoring for call centers. The availability of services for retail loans reduced by 67% from time-bound action in respect of stress, put has nearly doubled between March the average of nearly 30 days to nearly in place focussed recovery arrangements, 2018 and March 2020. 10 days. and established outcome-centric u There are nearly 40 million active u Cross-sell of non-banking financial HR systems. customers on mobile and internet products has made available bouquet banking with 140% increase in of financial products to the customers. TOP PERFORMING BANKS financial transactions through these 2 u For prudential lending, PSBs are Bank of Baroda, State Bank of India and channels and almost 50% of financial now systematically keeping watch on erstwhile Oriental Bank of Commerce transactions through digital channels. adherence to risk-based pricing, and were felicitated for being the top 3 (in u Call centers now offer services in 13 cases with deviation have reduced that order) in the ‘Top Performing Banks’ regional languages. from 59% to 20%, and have put in category according to the EASE 2.0 Index u Average TAT in complaint redressal has place data-driven risk-scoring for Results. Bank of Maharashtra, Central reduced from approximately 9 days to appraisal of high-value loans that Bank of India and erstwhile Corporation 5 days. factors in group-entities.

10 Banking Frontiers October 2020 u Most PSBs have deployed IT-based EWS systems leveraging third-party FM urges banks to adopt digital technologies data, which have enabled early, time- inance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has urged banks to adopt digital technologies bound action in stressed accounts. Ffor efficiency and growth. Applauding the lenders, she has observed that banks Monitoring has also been strengthened are going to be catalysts for economic revival and urged them to make sure that by deploying agencies for specialised such a revival is facilitated by use of digital tools. Whiile e-launching the ‘PSB Alliance monitoring, and proactively Doorstep Banking Services’, organized by IBA recently, she also participated in the monitoring listed entities based on awards ceremony to felicitate best performing banks on EASE Banking Reforms Index. published financials. Slippage into She told the banks to make special efforts to reach out to people through the help NPA has reduced from `3.90 trillion of bank mitras, so that no one feels excluded in the current digital revolution in the in 12 months ending March 2018 to banking sector. Easy access and efficiency in providing banking services will revive `1.45 trillion in 11 months ending businesses, she felt and it will will make a huge difference if banks are able to serve February 2020. customers through feature phones also, and just through smartphones. u PSBs have adopted digital platforms such as online OTS, e-Bkray and e-DRT for expedited recovery. 88% The Index measures the performance around 3x increase in Aadhaar Enabled of one-time settlement (OTS) cases of each PSB on 120+ objective metrics Payment System (AEPS) transactions are now tracked through dedicated IT across 6 themes. It provides all PSBs a through micro ATMs and enhanced systems. comparative evaluation showing where doorstep banking support by 75,000+ u PSBs have adopted new ways of credit, banks stand vis-à-vis benchmarks and Bank Mitras. To further support the such as PSBloansin59minutes.com peers on the Reforms Agenda. The customers in these times, the banks and Trade Receivables Discounting Index follows a fully transparent scoring have drastically increased the number of System (TReDS) for digital lending methodology, which enables banks to services being offered at the call centers, for MSMEs and retail. 73% of all identify precisely their strengths as well from 11 in March 2019 to 23 as of June PSB inland bills are now discounted as areas for improvement. The goal is 2020 in 13 regional languages. through online TReDS. to continue driving change by spurring A comprehensive agenda for smart, u The several governance reforms healthy competition among PSBs tech-enabled banking has been adopted introduced include arm’s length and by encouraging them to learn from for FY2020-21, under which PSBs have selection of top bank management each other. initiated eShishu Mudra for straight- through Banks Board Bureau, through processing of loans to micro- introduction of non-executive SUPPORT DURING LOCKDOWN enterprises and digital personal loan for chairpersons, leadership development PSBs have massively stepped up to support customers. PSBs have started providing and succession planning for the top the nation during the covid crisis. Using customer-need driven credit offers two levels below the board. In larger different modes of staffing, including through analytics and partnerships with PSBs, executive director strength remote working, some 80,000+ bank fintechs and e-commerce companies. has been increased, and boards are branches were operational during the empowered to introduce CGM level lockdown. Additionally, there has been FINANCIAL HEALTH OF PSBS for increased business. 90% uptime of self-service machines and Following the completion of recognition Top 3 banks in each theme of legacy stress as NPA, PSBs have returned to profitability with sound financial health and institutionalized Top 3 banks for EASE Theme 1: Responsible Banking Theme 4: UdyamiMitra for MSMEs 2.0 Index • Bank of Baroda • Oriental Bank of Commerce systems to prevent the recurrence • State Bank of India • State Bank of India of past weaknesses. The improved • Bank of Baroda • Punjab National Bank • Union Bank of India • State Bank of financial health of PSBs reflects in many India parameters: • Oriental Bank of Commerce Theme 2: Customer Responsiveness Theme 5: Deepening FI & Digitalisation u Gross NPAs reduced from `8.96 trillion • State Bank of India • Bank of Baroda in March 2018 to `6.78 trillion in March Top 3 banks in • Oriental Bank of Commerce • Canara Bank improvement from • Bank of Baroda • Punjab National Bank 2020 March baseline u A sharp decline in fraud occurrence from 0.65% of advances during • Bank of Theme 3: Credit Off-take Theme 6: Governance and HR Maharashtra • Oriental Bank of Commerce • State Bank of India FY10-FY14 to 0.06% in FY19-20, • Central Bank of • Union Bank of India • Bank of Baroda due to fraud prevention reforms and India • State Bank of India • Punjab National Bank • Corporation Bank proactive checking of legacy NPA; Note: Only banks with ≥80% of total weight for a theme applicable for them are considered for ranking u Record recovery of `2.27 trillion

Banking Frontiers October 2020 11 EASE 2.0 Reforms

in FY19-FY20 driven by newly 100 Centers: Doorstep Service setup dedicated stressed account oorstep banking service is intended to provide the convenience of banking services management verticals in PSBs; Dto the customers at their door steps through the universal touchpoints of call u Asset quality has improved significantly, centers, web portals or mobile apps. Customers can also track their service requests with the net NPA ratio reducing from through these channels. The services shall be rendered by the Doorstep Banking 7.97% in March 2018 to 3.75% in Agents deployed by the selected service providers at 100 centers across the country. March 2020; Doorstep banking services can be availed by customers of PSBs at nominal charges. The services shall benefit all customers, particularly senior citizens and Divyangs. u Number of PSBs under PCA down to 3; Hitherto only non-financial services viz. pick up of negotiable instruments (cheque / u CRAR 197 bps above the regulatory demand draft / pay order, etc.) were available; now services such as new cheque book minimum; and requisition, 15G / 15H forms, IT / GST challans; issue request for standing instructions, u The highest provision coverage ratio of delivery of account statement and non-personalized cheque books, demand drafts, 80.9% in 8 years. pay orders, term deposit receipts, acknowledgements, are now available. [email protected]

Leadership Perspectives for Contemporary Times uthors Ramesh Subramanian how these values are imbibed and then and Ramakrishnan Ramiah have permanently etched in the minds of Awritten a book on leadership titled the leaders. ‘Leadership by Values - The Proverbial It is obvious that if someone is a Cwtch of the Panglossian’. While there successful leader then he or she would are countless books on the subject, they have all these values that are core and have taken a relatively new approach by imbibed, because without those values it focusing on what are the critical values would be pretty difficult for a person to and how they help develop leadership. rise to leadership position. In the first 6 chapters, the authors laid While the subject of leadership is very the framework for the leadership model heavy, this book is very easy to read due to that they have built, which they describe 3 main reasons. First of all, it is very short, as the CPIE model. C stands for Core, I a total of 143 pages. Secondly, it has been Ramesh Subramanian for Imbibed, P for Practiced and E for written in very simple language that makes Etched. These values enter into the mind comprehension very easy. Thirdly, each scandals that are regularly seen in as the person grows older and gets more topic has been illustrated with numerous the financial sector, this values-based experience, ie they are a function of time. real-life examples. Some of the examples are leadership is very apt and timely. It The authors have projected a total anonymous, but that does not detract from the is something that the entire financial of 9 values for value-based leadership, impact. Many books on leadership present sector should take very seriously, else the of which 4 have been described as core examples from historic and ancient times, regulator will have to keep prescribing and 5 as imbibed. Beyond explaining but all the examples presented in this book tighter rules which will make doing the values, the authors have explained are contemporary and hence much easier business extremely difficult. to digest. In closing, here are a couple of While the authors have identified the valuable insights about leadership from About the Authors values on which leadership is built, they the book: amesh Subramanian is a Member of have not explained why those are the “Leaders and values attract each RLeaders Excellence at Harvard Square. values they have selected and why other other, and when a leader constantly He has studied at Loyola College, UCLA and values are not included. keeps thinking about values, they will INSEAD and has 20+ years of experience I am personally curious as to what eventually become what they think.” at EY, Ford, IBM, HP, Renault Nissan, happens to people who are missing “By default, values etch themselves etc. Ramakrishnan Ramiah is a PDGM in some of the values. Do they fail to in our memory, even without us Advertising & Public Relations. He has become leaders? Do they become dis- being aware.” 40+ years of experience in pharma, agri functional leaders? I wish the book had Happy reading for book lovers and inputs, light engineering, agro-industrial addressed that. leadership minded people. and FMCG. Given the large number of financial [email protected]

12 Banking Frontiers October 2020 eMarket for Farmers NeML platforms boost prices for FPOs In 3 years, NeML has registered over 4 million farmers and transacted more than `160 billion:

he erstwhile NCDEX Spot Exchange doorstep. EFresh attracts robust onboarding process is now NCDEX eMarkets (NeML) wholesale and retail buyers followed for its members. While Tand is the only full-service e-market as they are assured of access NeML facilitates the process of company in the country. NeML’s Chief Sales to national markets, tracking making easy credit available to Officer Shailesh Chitre says the company of order, order consolidation its members, the final decision recently ran a successful campaign focusing mechanism, transparent price is taken by the member banks in on Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) discovery mechanism and line with their credit assessment to familiarize the farming community best quality delivered fresh at policies,” says Shailesh Chitre. about the e-market platform. “During this the doorstep. campaign period, our FPO membership FPO members prefer using E-SAMRIDHI SYSTEM increased by 4 times. At present, we have NeML eMarket platforms as they Shailesh Chitre Over the past 3 years, NeML has more than 250 FPOs members on our are assured of no conflict of interest as it is been engaged with NAFED and some state various e-Market platforms spread over 14 a purely e-market company with no vested governments for their MSP procurements. states. Maharashtra accounts for maximum interests in trading. Shailesh Chitre says in The NeML designed eSamridhi system has number of FPO members, followed by addition, NeML assures the best transparent been implemented by NAFED as the main Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. During the price discovery opportunities given its vast system for the entire MSP procurement April-July 2020 period, the top participation and unmatched network of more than for pulses and oil seeds. Shailesh Chitre came from the West (35%), Maharashtra 12,000 buyers spread across various states says eSamridhi has been implemented (30%) and Bihar (20%),” says he. around the country. “This enviable advantage in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra By using the platform, the FPOs could places NeML uniquely in a position to get Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Rajasthan, realise prices higher than the prevailing private buyers’ seasonal volume and quality Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam and market prices for their products and requirement data and sharing it with Uttar Pradesh. It is designed to capture when they sold more than 650 MT of prospective FPOs for procurement initiation. the entire workflow of the procurement agricultural commodities. Shailesh Chitre Most importantly, FPOs are assured of timely process right from farmer registration, mentions that during the April-July 2020 payments and protected in case of a default by identity registration, land records, lot period, this basket consisted of 11 agri- the buyer,” he says. details, quality details, warehouse receipt commodities covering cereals, pulses, fruits and farmer payments. In the past 3 years, and vegetables of which 8 fetched 1% to 3% BANKS’ CREDIT ASSESSMENT NeML has registered over 4 million farmers higher than market prices in cases of cereals As the leading e-Market operator in the and payments amount more than `160 and pulses and 10% to 30% for fruits. For country, NeML is committed to create billion have been credited into the farmer the buyers too, there is guaranteed supply and support the entire ecosystem enabling accounts using DBT, he adds. of required volumes as NeML platforms are its e-Market platforms like warehouses, a one-stop shop for them saving them the assaying services, logistics providers RASHTRIYA E-MARKET inconvenience of buying fragmented lots and financial institutions. It has tied up ReMS (Rashtriya eMarket Services) is the for which they are more than willing to pay with more than 14 banks. “These include first joint venture company in the country, a premium to the marketplace, adds he. private and PSU banks and these banks which has been set up to implement the There is a unique initiative on the are comfortable with providing financial agricultural marketing policy with the NeML platform – EFresh, which integrates needs of the buyer and seller participants state government of Karnataka and NeML the e-spot markets with the nationwide cold with a transaction track record with NeML. having shareholding of 50% each. ReMS storage network of Schedulers Logistics A significant part of their due-diligence is mandated to work closely with market to provide the best produce at customers’ process is taken care of by the NeML’s committees in the state and provide a versatile and powerful unified market platform for all market operations. The year 2017-18 has been an important milestone for the organization, as its mobile app was launched in that year. With 162 e-markets, more than 60 commodities are traded here, with trading volume running in billions of rupees. [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 13 Going Digital 3X jump in 5 years CAMS has leveraged its proprietary platforms to triple transaction volumes and offer many more services:

omputer Age Management one email address per investor account, Services, or CAMS, the technology- implementing a DNS utility to prevent Cdriven financial infrastructure and virus attacks, establishing direct real-time services provider to mutual funds and other data backup, among others. financial institutions, is the largest registrar Last year, we showed up as one of the and transfer agent of mutual funds in India. best in the country in the financial service Its CEO Anuj Kumar recounts the recent sector on the BitSight score. BitSight is a digital initiatives of the company. monitoring agency, a global company which gives an outside-in view of a company’s Mehul Dani: What are the milestones that cyber security posture. This year we have CAMS achieved in the last FY? improved our score to 800. Anuj Kumar: There was an all- round increase in average assets under Any recent additions to your product and management, or AAuM, transactions service range? and investor folios that we serviced in We have been focused on adding FY2020 when compared to the previous Anuj Kumar services for our existing mutual fund clients year. AAuM serviced by us increased from relating to servicing of investors, interface `15.8 trillion to `18 trillion, mutual fund investors, clients, distributors and channel with investors, distributors and other transaction volume grew from 312 million providers. We have developed in-house and stakeholders, risk management, process to 328 million and investor folios went own Investrak.NET, a mutual funder agency automation, data analytics and business up from 63.5 million to 71.7 million. In platform, myCAMS, a mobile device investor intelligence in order to grow and maintain CAMS Insurance Repository Services, the interface application, GoCORP, a distributor our share of business and revenues from number of e-insurance policies we held focused application, and MFDEx a market our mutual fund clients. For example, increased from 2.1 million to 2.8 million. intelligence product/information database, our anti-money laundering service, which Our myCAMS mobile app has 3.2 million among many other services. detects, investigates and reports suspicious registered users. transactions, is separately provided and What is the size of your IT team? additionally chargeable. We also recently What are the major IT and digital initiatives? Our IT team comprises 606 qualified launched edge360, a tool for distributors to Our proprietary platforms are built to professionals as of 30 June 2020, who enable the tracking of fees for transactions absorb growth in the number of investors, manage a comprehensive proprietary IT and the ability to view, track and manage assets and trading volumes. From handling infrastructure, develop innovative products portfolios of investors. over 98 million transactions in the FY2015, and ensure systems and data security, we touched 328 million transactions in the in addition to offering 24x7 support to How do you propose to enhance your last FY. We believe that our competitive our clients. market share? technology advantage stems from the Our present market share is capability, functionality, integration and How are you ensuring cyber security? approximately 70%, based on mutual fund scalability of our platforms, which deliver CAMS has implemented a cyber security AAuM managed by our clients and serviced breadth and quality of service and cost and cyber resilience policy and established by us during July 2020, according to CRISIL efficiencies. Our continuing investment in a technology committee comprising Report. We had a market share of 39% in these platforms continues to strengthen eminent specialists from IIT Bombay the insurance repository business, based our competitive advantage by further and IIT Madras, as well as the banking on e-insurance policies being managed, increasing operating leverage, driving industry. The committee meets quarterly during the financial year 2018. Further, we ongoing innovation, anticipating industry and reviews the robustness and resilience of are focused on increasing our mutual fund developments and delivering increased our systems and processes. The minutes of client base by attracting new mutual funds efficiencies. the committee are submitted to our Board, being launched in India as our clients. We and actions taken by us pursuant to such believe our market leading position and our Any new tech enabled offerings? report are submitted to SEBI. Examples strengths adequately position us to increase We offer many of our services online and of initiatives taken by us to improve our the number of our mutual fund clients. through our mobile device applications for processes and systems include limiting [email protected]

14 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Securities Trading Where technology is the first solution Samco Group relies on technology for its 4-pronged business strategy:

nvestors and traders from over 2000+ cities trade with Samco Securities, Ione of India’s fastest growing discount brokers as the firm offers trading accounts for the exchanges and demat accounts as a depository participant. Broking houses are facing positive pressure post covid as there has been an unexpected increase in volume and interest in equity markets. While the industry was capable but probably it was not prepared for an overnight volume spike. According to Chiraj Joshi, Chief Marketing Officer, Samco Group, this a speed bump and things are under control now. “Usage Chiraj Joshi Pratik Adani and time spent on apps have almost doubled since March 2020,” says he. source of business has always been digital covid the group has initiated a number of but definitely it had to account for scaling internal projects that will help it to scale up 4-PRONGED STRATEGY up with numbers doubling that nobody on all fronts. Adani mentions about digital Samco has been focusing on 4 fronts - expected before covid. onboarding and training. “Training has been capturing more leads, smooth onboarding, The group has a strong presence on at the center of our work culture and post- efficient and satisfactory customer social media. According to Joshi social lockdown physical training and mentoring support and re-activating old customers. media is used mainly for making critical was not possible, So, we undertook a project Joshi explains: “We have invested heavily announcements, taking customer feedback to create an online learning platform for our in marketing automation, especially and extending customer support. “I believe employees. Technology is the only savior. facilitating sending communications to social media offers the fastest way to talk to Irrespective of departments, technology our customers using emails, voice calls, customers,” he adds. can help in all areas like marketing, HR and SMS and notifications that consist of video customer support,” says he. tutorials, DIY articles, etc, to fill in the gap FLEXIBILE CUSTOMIZATIONS of limited manpower. These efforts became Samco believes that any investment in its AUTOMATION TO GUIDE the focus area in March as soon as we technology infrastructure should be more The group has deployed a customized CRM, realized the rising demand.” capex and less opex. Pratik Adani, Chief aiming to reduce the time taken to answer The firm’s support team had great Technology Officer, explains this: “Such a a customer query. Joshi gives example: challenges in a WFH scenario, basically on strategy helps us build assets on a longer- “Once the customer is on-boarded, we the communications front as there is lack of term, which will be useful in future. We use marketing automation to guide them telecom infrastructure and it could rely only also believe in open source and most of through the next steps of getting started on technology. It set up a dedicated desk for our technologies are built on that. We are from login for first time to transferring its old and loyal customers to address their building our own private cloud infra so as funds to placing their first trade.” queries and get them back to the platform. to give us flexibility with customizations He adds that covid has taught the group “Using an automated appointment booking while keeping our costs in check. We used a lot of things and it is now operationally system, we have been able to speak with to plan 6 months in advance but due to the more evolved than before. Several time- these customers and give them the time lockdown this has to change.” consuming processes have been automated and attention they wanted, ultimately It has now planned for a year ahead and it has found out avenues to explore reactivating them,” says Joshi. and it does not forget that it has to scale up use of technology to enhance customer quickly. Adani also says procuring hardware experience. “Fast onboarding, easy access SCALING UP DIGITALLY during lockdown was a challenge. to support and digitization of most of the Samco Group has always been a digital-first offline physical processes will be primary on company. Much of its business is garnered ONLINE LEARNING our list for the next 12 months. Besides this, online thereby eliminating the need to All the departmental heads of the group we will be releasing a faster and a revamped bring in drastic changes to its existing are specially trained to explore technology version of StockNote app,” says he. strategy. Joshi says fortunately the major first as a solution to their problems. Post [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 15 Web Panel Discussion 3D Economy -

Data, Digital & Disruption KNOWLEDGE PARTNER Speaker’s Participant’s Banking Frontiers, in association with Snowflake,PRESENTS organized a web panel discussion by experts on the transformative role of data.Team Edited Snowflake excerpts: For making Bertram D’Souza, SVP & Head - Digital Payments, Open Banking & Fintech 3D Economy - Data, Digital, Disruption Partnerships, Kotak Mahindra Bank When it comes to data, banks have an inherent competitive advantage in terms of volume, quality and quantity of data - whether it is demographic or transactional. The key to building successful digital Vijay Kumar Vinod Kumar Vimal Venkatram Rangarajan CEO & Principal CIO, Fino Country Manager Vasudevan products in this space is to collect deep Officer, Go-Digit Payments Bank -India, Snowflake CEO, General Insurance The Data Team insights from users and then create a Harshvardhan Chamria Shivani Venkatesh, Bertram Dsouza Manoj Agrawal good data collection architecture. It is also CDO, VP & Head -Clients SVP & Head-Digital Group Editor, Magma Fincorp Insights, RBL Bank Payments, Open Banking Frontiers important to understand how this data Banking & Fintech Partnerships, can translate into a framework to deliver Kotak Mahindra Bank key business outcomes. BFSI entities have goals like how to use digital to identify real-time recommendations based on past We must learn from large ecommerce the right customers for an acquisition information. This is possible by analyzing companies and the way they use perspective and how to engage unstructured and structured data coming recommendations and bring some of with existing customers. A lot from multiple sources, such as social media, that intelligence into our own digital of engagement would come images, files, customer location and others to experiences for our customers. The channel from a deep understanding create a deeper understanding of customers. transformation that has happened over the of what makes a customer This will evolve more in the banking sector years has made us create one of the best mobile pick a product. Also need to and each person will have a unique hyper- banking apps in the market. Consumption understand enough about personalized experience. The way millennials of content and certain ecommerce journeys B za what the customer aspires would like to engage with the bank and the could also start originating from within bank ert ou ram Ds for in the next level of products way senior citizens would like to engage with ecosystems. I see this as an emerging trend in and services. it are different and it is something that we are times to come. I think, that’s where digital plays a key actively working towards. role in delivering that native user experience Some of the platforms we have Harshvardhan Chamria, Chief Digital to capture a user’s attention and cross-sell invested in, help us move towards a digital, Officer (CDO), Magma Fincorp and upsell effectively. paperless, presence-less and contactless We started out by using a data analytics A few years ago, Kotak Mahindra Bank kind of ecosystem. The covid pandemic tool to create lending scorecards and on the started its data centralization journey. has made it clear that digital is a primary basis of this, our underwriters could decide We recognized the fact that centralizing a channel and without it, it is difficult for whether to give a loan to a customer or lot of disparate data sources was crucial any organization to survive. During the not. With the emergence of AI, ML and for future use-cases. Implementing use- pandemic, we have seen a combination other technologies, we are now actually cases does take its own time as building of offline digital payments that have been having the ability to analyze unstructured intelligence on top of data is not an easy made easy to execute using QR codes and and surrogate non-financial data in real- task. Historical information and certain new online payment methods have also time to create feedback recommendations in the digital layer can been rising sharply facilitating a lot of data loops. This has helped prompt/nudge a customer. All these models collection from transactions. A lot of these us to expand the are tried and tested across the industry initiatives - whether they are payments market to financially and some large players in the ecommerce related or product-centric, have come include new-to- ecosystem too have adopted it. We have together. It is an incredibly unique time credit and thin-file a first-hand learnings from this area. to make sense of and build innovative use- customers, who have H ri ar Most BFSI companies can provide cases on top of it. no repayment history. sh am vardhan Ch 16 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Additionally, it has helped us in taking analysis required is significantly lower for databases as well, however the quality of lending decisions quickly, thereby creating a and existing customer, and the acquisition data that most insurance companies receive shift from a small number of large transactions costs are also lower. from the intermediaries is not good enough to large number of small transactions, and The digital economy is moving towards to have a 360-degree customer view. In also giving rise to card-less credit on the platform businesses and our focus is to get addition, KYC is not mandatory in the non- fly. Magma Fincorp works with customers more and more data from the customer. life insurance sector, and insurance being a who are part of the informal economy - 85% You can move beyond a transactional push product, the companies cannot force of them do not file ITR, most of them are relationship, and create a deeper a customer to give complete information. thin-file or new to credit customers. Our relationship with the customer, where you The customer also hesitates to give too field-teams capture alternate data such are providing useful information to the much information because of fear of policy as acreage of farm, additional informal customer in the form of content, services rejection at the time of underwriting or income of family members, electricity bill of and partnerships with the other relevant claims settlement. Hence, the sector needs manufacturing entities, routes plied by truck companies. When you are digitally engaged a 360-degree view on priority because an drivers, etc, and populate this data into the with the customer, you are constantly insurance business involves risks for which loan origination app on their smartphones. exchanging data, you are providing services customer data is of utmost importance and After this, we overlay portfolio-performance and in exchange you are getting data. This there is no matured ecosystem available data for look-alike customers from the credit helps you to have a continuous engagement unlike for other sectors. bureaus. All of this happens in real-time. with the customer and be present when the The government, industry and IRDAI The credit models are accordingly able to customer needs your services. are working to improve the situation. Data give an instant decision in two-thirds of our repositories like Vahan and Insurance new customers. A human credit underwriter Vijay Kumar, CEO & Principal Officer, Information Bureau (IIB) share information plays a limited verification role here. Go-Digit General Insurance with the insurance companies about Data analytics has helped us to move Digit Insurance has always seen vehicles in a limited manner. The health from purely efficient processing of data to technology as a major enabler in all its ministry has plans to come with a common expansion of market and customer segments. operations and covid has forced platform where the information We are now planning on going direct-to- us to enter into the new era in about the health of individuals will customer with a smartphone app and also this use of technology. Even be available. direct-to-dealer/channel to source business. before covid, Digit has always Digit is much better placed Digital transformation marks a been a digital first company compared to some large and radical rethinking of how an organization across operations like claim older companies. Whatever data uses technology, people and processes settlement, underwriting and is available with us, we are trying to r to fundamentally change business issuance of polices. Digit has Vijay Kuma refine it with the help of data analytics. performance. When we launched our new grown by 36% in these crises ridden We have an added advantage of being 100% omni-channel CRM, we discovered that period and this has happened because on the cloud which helps in developing even though we were displaying cross- of the extensive use of technology, being a 360-degree view. One good example of sell offers on the screen, our field force 100% on cloud and a lot of investment in this is our Flight Delay product under the could not cross-sell substantially and the IT infrastructure. Technology has helped travel insurance LOB. In this product both reason was that we had not changed the us in servicing our partners faster, assisting policy issuance and claim settlement do not behavior of our employees after launching our customers with claims seamlessly require human intervention at the back the platform. Subsequently, we started and growing steadily in just 3 years of end. If a flight gets delayed by 75 minutes gamification of the entire experience, operations. or more, the claim automatically gets lodged incentivizing employees and introducing The insurance sector has some inherent and the claim amount gets transferred to the training programs, train the trainer kind of challenges compared to the other sectors. customer without the customer asking for programs and after that we saw a boost in Every general insurance company has a it. This is possible because the information our cross-sell figures. huge database. However, there are issues available from the airlines about flight The loan underwriting application regarding quality. This is mainly because delays gets integrated with our policy data and collection application are 2 separate insurance businesses generally depend on and the customer gets intimated about the platforms. After building our data intermediaries, agents, MISPs, brokers, claim proactively, and the claim gets paid warehouse, we linked the risk, credit and etc, and policy renewals are required every without any manual intervention. portfolio performance data with cross-sell year. The intermediaries are generally very In motor insurance, there is a vast data. This has made pre-approved offer protective about their customer database usage of AI and video streaming so that generation far quicker. It is of course much and provide only limited information. policies can be issued on this basis and also easier to give loans to repeat customers, Although new age insurers like us try to claims can be settled without much manual compared to new customers because the leverage customer data from various public intervention.

Banking Frontiers October 2020 17 Web Panel Discussion

One area where the non-life insurance documents and he used to open the bank say migrants coming from UP to Bihar or industry is at a disadvantage is the inability accounts. When the government gives from Bihar to Kerala or Rajasthan. If we to offer value added services along with any allowance, the gram panchayat head track each customer’s banking activities insurance. Non-life insurance companies usually gets all the money, and not the over a period of time, we can see a pattern are still not permitted to cross-sell their intended beneficiary. The right person was from the transaction habits of the person products with value added services due to not able to get the right amount of benefits and can make sense from this data. regulatory restrictions. I am sure these may that he / she was entitled to. Covid has brought big learning for all soon get sorted out by the regulator. But this has changed with the advent the financial organizations - banks and We at Digit are trying to learn from of Aadhaar. With over 90% of the country’s non-banks. The customer requirements online platform giants such as Flipkart and population covered by Aadhaar, it has a suddenly changed, the availability and Paytm. There is a unique challenge working transformational effect on the banking accessibility of the data on a need basis and with such e-commerce players who require industry. Identification and authentication at any point became crucial. quick and hassle-free underwriting and of an individual became easier with Before 22 March 2020 (pre-covid), the claims processes. Here, although we are biometrics. In the context of rural India, for regulator used to see the entire processes only selling a piece of paper, yet there is the beneficiaries of various government DBT differently; there were restrictions and a risk associated with it. Based on our schemes, Aadhaar has been of great benefit. many dos and don’ts. Suddenly, many learning, we have reshaped the customer The right person is getting the benefit, the things that were not permitted for ages journey in various products like mobile number of frauds got reduced, people can become available to the organization, insurance, shop-keepers insurance, jewelry transact from anywhere and open bank albeit with adequate controls, security insurance to name a few. accounts using only a fingerprint. Even for and checks and balances in place. It has Selling on the website directly is also us at Fino Payments Bank, Aadhaar-based not only helped the organization from a growing well due to the improved ease of services are crucial as 80% of our business cost perspective, but also from managing transactions, better underwriting options comes from rural India. the entire operations. We believe a lot of and faster claims. We try to keep our Over the years, there has been a positive policy and process changes will come in the communication crisp, friendly and brief on shift in customer behavior, especially when days ahead. our website so customers can buy and claim it comes to adopting digital platforms instantly. for banking. Thanks to the internet Shivani Venkatesh, VP & Head, Clients The insurance industry has been connectivity and smartphone penetration, Insights, RBL Bank facing challenges especially with a global people are more tech-savvy in the remote A 360-degree pandemic in rage, but with a hunger for rural areas than earlier days.This shift also view is no longer a better customer experience and various coincided with the other changes taking destination, it is a technologies being an enabler, insurers are place in the banking space. Earlier, people journey, because of now seeing a change for good. were fully dependent on a branch for the the pace at which banking activities, but that is changing now. data is adding up. S h Vinod Kumar, CIO, Fino Payments Bank Any neighborhood small business outlet Every new application h tes ivani nka To understand the digital transformation can become a banking point by installing you launch, every new Ve journey, we need to consider the past 5-6 a micro ATM and Aadhaar authentication investment you make in terms of digital years’ experience from a data perspective device. products, more data is required. RBL Bank and see where we stand today. Fino Payments Bank follows a is investing a lot on collecting and gathering How are we looking at the data? How merchant-based phygital model - a physical data, because there is a conviction that this much quantity and quality are needed to outlet enabled with digital devices to data by itself would be valuable. Secondly, take any of the decisions? A few years ago, it facilitate banking services. Currently, we data is seen as part of a larger ecosystem was primarily physical documents for KYC have around 270,000 active merchants and to make sense of it is very critical. and other banking requirements where across India and we plan to have 500,000 Different parts of an organization data was captured and protected, but was merchants by the end of this year. can have different stages of digital not analyzed the way it is done today. Customers can visit any of the transformation. At the same time, it creates In the rural areas, prior to micro-ATM enabled merchant case studies within the organization for the digital transformation, lot points to open a bank account other teams to refer and those are much of frauds used to happen due or do any banking transaction. more relatable than looking at the case to lack of quality of data. For We can capture the data of the studies outside the organization. example, in many rural places, merchant, data of the customer, RBL Bank started its digital the gram panchayat head used type of transaction, etc. There transformation journey 8 years ago. At that to control all the processes. are multiple data points we get time, there was an orientation of digital- V ar Village people used to sign the inod Kum from each and every customer, like first. The bank has a legacy of 75+ years

18 Banking Frontiers October 2020 and we must take this before cloud, digital, teams together to empower people to make work with top-notch efficiency. Bringing and partner orientation. From the process, decisions truly based on data. a new source of revenue or controlling people and technology perspective, we How can I get a single source of truth? forecasts is the root of the business, and always have goals to achieve. A lot of things Velocity, volume and variety of data is no data can be only a proxy. It can tell you cannot be picked up immediately because longer coming in terabytes; we are talking what is happening and potentially inform these will slow down the speed of progress. petabytes now. How you define costs is the you what could be done in the future. Certain things must be taken cautiously. first parameter - and it is not about the Because it is just a proxy, there are layers Covid has pressed the reset button and costs of storing the data, but what I am of interpretation that are required for it has provided the opportunity and created doing with the data and what are the use to make sense in the context of specific the new normal like WFH and for that, we cases that I am enabling. If an organization business cases. That is where innovation is must access the data in a certain way. is building up the total costs of ownership happening, and we have created a platform over a period of 5-7 years, it is especially for it. These layers of interpretation could Vimal Venkatram, Country Manager - important to understand what you are typically be source of frustration mainly on India, Snowflake doing today, versus what is going to come account of correctly translating the data. It is exceedingly difficult to steal data 5 years from now. The costs might grow up AI can play a critical role in short- from Snowflake. We have some of the to 5X, but if you do the right analysis, you’d circuiting the process and secondly in largest banking customers who are very be able to see the tremendous impact it has interpreting these proxies’ aspects which highly regulated and who are also big users on your revenue. are awfully hard for humans to see. The of Snowflake’s cloud data platform. One Organizations should embrace the scale in which you must good example is Capital One. From our public cloud - this is one place where deal with processing perspective, there are two key trends that cost will be the critical component. If is not something have been shifting in the last 5-6 months. you analyze a petabyte of data today, you that humans sitting Many customers have come to realize that pay for that petabyte; and if you analyze in the back office they cannot function with data silos. If you 100 terabytes of the data the next day, would be able to do. R n want to create a 360-degree view of the you should only need to pay for that 100 The ethics prejudices a a n ev customer, data needs to reside in one single terabytes. Such pricing model provides are there while making ga d rajan Vasu location - you cannot have 20 different flexibility for organizations to scale up a human decision as data sets sitting at different locations at and scale down. Therefore, embracing the opposed to an algorithm that can be set any one time, especially when you are public cloud would be one of the best ways up to be consistent. It can be set up to trying to analyze customers’ spend, fraud for organizations to control costs. be objective, but there are aspects around risks, cross-sell and upsell opportunities Snowflake Data Sharing allows biases that need to be taken care of. There etc. Snowflake helps to consolidate customers to deliver seamless data is a need to build a process for ensuring all the data sets into a single collaboration while reducing fairness in the entire decision making. AI platform. And data acquisition costs. And with Snowflake Data plays the role of making sure that proxies is overly critical today, hence Marketplace, organizations are correctly interpreted for correct any type of data that may not can even create new revenue business outcomes. seem relevant now will be so streams and monetize their It would not be completely possible in the coming years. This could own data in a super-secure to use automated testing methods for V m be an invaluable tool for a im ra manner, since data never leaves any evaluating fairness. You would need real- al Venkat competitive edge. premises at all. Snowflake is enabling world inputs and feedback as well. But, a Snowflake also enables Data Sharing. the data economy today. lot of biases can be captured for evaluation. Lots of customers can now start sharing There are cutting edge techniques which data securely between each other to Rangarajan Vasudevan, Founder & CEO, are being deployed, which are focused on enrich their own data sets. For instance, a TheDataTeam explaining the outcomes of AI but they healthcare provider can share data with a It is not just the factual data - there are are not ready for the current times and life insurance provider. Data enrichment things like KYC. It has an added element industrial use. can happen across all organizations; in to it, relating to customer behavior. It is TheDataTeam helps companies build fact, we have seen these changes in the necessary to check multitude of data as an pipelines that are required by them and the last 5-6 months. Organizations which institution may not be aware of the value pipeline must be in place before you have have the intent to change, understand and proposition of specific data until there is a the people inside the house. Companies appreciate that data can truly transform need to collect, even though they may not must make sure that they have done their businesses. The minute there is intent be able to make a case immediately. the right plumbing by applying the to change, it just means you are willing to Ultimately, data is just a proxy for the right architecture. break down barriers, and mix and merge business, and it matters that business should [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 19 Cover Story CREATIVE DATA

MARKET MEDIA

CONSUMER COMPETITION

CUSTOMER ROI

GROWTH BEHAVIOR

Defining A Marketing Genius

Banking Frontiers asked 10 BFSI CMOs about their definition of marketing genius. And their views are featured here, dividing them into four parts - (i) definition, (ii) importance of awards & media coverage, (iii) educational background required to be a good marketer, (iv) common marketing errors:

20 Banking Frontiers October 2020 bviously, the key skills of a marketing customers stay satisfied and delighted, says she, genius are understanding ‘how and why’ adding: “That is why a marketing genius could Opeople think and act the way they do. It is be creating tomorrow’s revenue and customer difficult to create compelling content marketing, stickiness while delivering today’s programs.” for example, if you do not know why it would be compelling to your audience in the first place. THE REQUIREMENT OF A SKILLED Consumer behavior is difficult to understand, MARKETER especially considering that customers have Some BFSI CMOs define the term ‘marketing different interests and opinions. Looking into genius’ as about creating sustainable value the psychology behind consumer behaviour may for all stakeholders - customers, distributors, offer useful responses on questions like ‘Which employees, the public, shareholders, etc. marketing tactics drive sales?’ and ‘What works Chandramohan Mehra, Chief Marketing Officer, on social media?’ Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, believes that it Karthi Marshan, President & Chief eventually, it boils down to a deep understanding Marketing Officer, Kotak Mahindra Group, of customers and translating customer insights gives the physiological definition of a marketing Karthi Marshan into value-generating actions that are both genius: “The word that interests me is genius, thinks that a real creative and strategic. Also, there has to be an not marketing. It is very telling that the marketing genius appetite to continuously learn, adapt and reskill etymology of the word genius can be traced back in continuously evolving business dynamics led to the Sanskrit word for mother, birth giver, and absorbs everything by technology and changing consumer habits, compassion. Because, at their best, that is what from culture, arts & he adds. marketing practitioners do, viz listen to the human psychology Rakesh Wadhwa, Chief Customer and consumer and engage with compassion.” Marketing Officer, Future Generali India Karthi Marshan feels that the real marketing Life Insurance, recounts that genius refers to genius is about being a sponge that absorbs exceptional natural ability or skill in a particular everything, from culture, the arts, human area. “So, a person who has exceptional ability psychology, and then creating products and and skill in the field of marketing should be a services that not only feed the body but also marketing genius. However, to me, a marketeer sustain the soul of the society. represents customers in the organization. Humanizing marketing is the key to business Marketers who enable the organization to success. To do this, brands need to build an deliver value beyond customer expectations, emotional connection and relationship with repeatedly and consistently should qualify to be their customers and eventually earn their trust. called a genius.” Companies must build the customer relationship rather than just talk about customer centricity. MARKETING IS A PROCESS According to Anjali Malhotra, Chief Customer, The word ‘genius’ is described as 99% Marketing, Digital, and IT Officer at Aviva Life perspiration and 1% inspiration. Marketing is Insurance the term genius is often resonated with a process where marketers need to identify the someone who solves complicated problems. “On problem and work at what possible solutions the contrary,” she says, “in marketing parlance, could be, list out hypothesis, scenarios, test genius is someone who can simplify brand them with its customers, use consumer insights, communication. The most effective brands are narrow down their choices. those that communicate in simple language, use Anand Bhatia, CMO, Fino Payments Bank, crisp communication, sound humane, relatable, emphasizes that’s a marketer needs to align with empathetic and cracking the customer insights other stakeholders (who often may not agree) and tapping it.” and assign chances of success. They need to think Anjali Malhotra believes that it is about about the costs, ROI, etc, take the flak when it sharing and respecting ethics and values, listening Anjali Malhotra fails and share the credit when it succeeds, figure to what customers wants and then delivering verifies that an out what worked and what did not and repeat solutions, engagements, and communications authenticity is the process for the next campaign, he says. “A that can add value to customers lives. This a powerful tool marketer who can stay with this discipline will authenticity makes it even more powerful see results/ impact compounding overtime he because it not only helps you build relevant for marketing who realizes this and stays the arduous journey products and propositions but also ensures that communications is a real genius,” says he.

Banking Frontiers October 2020 21 Cover Story

Sapna Desai, Head, Marketing & solutions. “Besides having a host of data points Communication at ManipalCigna Health at your disposal to do this, marketers must also Insurance, says there is no rulebook, which a have an innate ability to verily relate to their marketer can follow. “There is the old saying consumers,” he adds. that ‘You can’t learn to ride a bicycle at a Abhinav Iyer also stresses that every product seminar’. It does not matter what aspect of life has a market and a smart marketer must have we are talking about, there is a huge, enormous the ability to marry their product values and difference between learning from theories distinctions with those aspired by their audiences and delving into the empirical knowledge,” and consumers. “Eventually, a marketing genius she says. emerges when a marketer can successfully wed She continues: “I believe, the real bottom- businesses with markets,” he points out. line truth about all talented marketers is that they know how to challenge their skills, develop WHO IS A TRUE MARKETING GENIUS? ideas and create a thinking process that others A true marketing genius is one who can learn for decades to emulate.” successfully observe, innovate and execute the Abhinav Iyer, GM – Marketing & Strategy, Abhinav Iyer strategies based on the transitions, which this The Muthoot Group, feels that marketing genius describes ever-changing world can bring to business is a beautiful blend between two abilities – one, marketer’s aptitude anytime. It is significant for marketers to the ability to associate with one’s consumers and to think and feel like evolve with time, learn from crises, manage two, the ability to swiftly identify opportunities their consumers unforeseen circumstances and remain obsessed and address them. A marketer’s aptitude to think with figuring creative ways to add value to those and feel like their consumers, he believes, are already existing. A true genius knows that - one overly critical to be able to ascertain or predict who creates the most value in the eyes of the their buying behaviour and offer meaningful customer, finally wins the race.

Part 2 Top CMO - Award or Media coverage? CMOs winning an award for best CMO, figuring among the top 10 CMOs from reputed organizations or publications, or getting interviewed by a reputed publication or media channels… which one counts to be an excellent CMO?

inning awards and being featured in MEDIA COVERAGE credible journals are commendable for Getting interviewed by a reputed publication or WCMOs. Winning awards is celebrating media channel would impact other marketer’s achievements and every good work needs to judgment. The interaction gives a sense of the be acknowledged, appreciated and celebrated. marketer’s perspective and critically adds an It motivates marketers to strive harder and understanding of the market, consumer, and dive deeper. business. Abhinav Iyer discusses the concept: Chirag Joshi, CMO, Samco Group, says “Interviews are also ways to gain insights and awards and recognitions may drive the expertise of experienced marketers. I have always perception of a good CMO. “Nowadays, awards loved reading interviews as there is always are part of a brand or a content strategy. I do not something new to learn and know creative ideas think best CMO or top CMO award validates an that have been well executed and delivered impact!” excellent CMO. Chirag Joshi is of the view that if an interview There are several startups that do well, and Chirag Joshi promotes is about industry development or advertisement their CMOs keep their head down and keep compliance change, the CMOs’ comments and working to accomplish business objectives liberal arts & psychology actions speak for themselves and they would be without bothering about awards or any other candidates for busy making and executing strategies to tackle such distractions,” says he. communication roles the compliance change.

22 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Says R. Balaji, Senior Vice President, judgment. Equally important is the campaigns Marketing & Strategy, Mahindra Finance: “In the that they run and how these campaigns work case of awards, the key criteria would be the peers in the marketplace like when people talk about who have won the awards and the organization how an advert or a campaign helped them decide that is giving out these awards. Both awards and what to buy. In such cases, the CMO plays a key interviews are relevant. However, an interview role in determining success and failure.” provides the reader/viewer with an opportunity Most CMOs agree that an excellent CMO is to evaluate the quality of responses and to form the one who contributes to the overall business their opinion. I, however, prefer an interview growth of the organization, be a partner in the over an award,” customer journey, and delivers exceptional brand value at every touchpoint – internal and external. PRIME OBJECTIVE Business growth is a key factor that validates an NONE OF THE ABOVE excellent CMO because marketing is a primary Some of the CMOs point out that winning sales support function. The only measure of a an award or getting covered by media does great CMO is how much sales did he enable for R. Balaji favors not mean the CMO is doing good work. The the company using whatever fancy advertising media interviews primary job of a CMO, they insist, is to create and strategy he may wish to use. Anjali Malhotra over awards as value for customers, partners and shareholders believes that the best CMOs are those who can it provides an through a deep understanding of customers and simplify their brand communication and brand opportunity to form influencing customer value drivers collectively experience such that customers find it relatable, with other stakeholders. meaningful, and delightful to interact with an impression Rakesh Wadhwa does not agree to any of the the brand and its products/ services. “The key above options. Says he: “I would go for an option resultant metrics would be growth in market C – ‘None of the above’: In my opinion, CMOs share, retention, customer delight scores, and should not be defined by such a criterion to prove lifetime value,” she adds. their capability. Our moment of truth is when Subhasis Ghosh, Head of Marketing & our customers vote with their feet or fingers Alliances at Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance (in the virtual world). I believe in numbers to Company, says getting interviewed gives an do the talking when it comes to the appraisal insight into the mind of the person. But to deliver of our work. Whatever your brand objectives quality work consistently, one must work with the are, if we deliver the brand promise, offer a team, indeed the entire ecosystem. Ultimately, it differentiated experience while adding value with is the continuous fulfilment of the task at hand our efforts, customers will gravitate towards us. over a long period that is the true judge of the When customers vote for us, the above two will success of any professional, he stresses. naturally follow.” Anand Bhatia thinks CMOs play a crucial For Subhasis Ghosh, it is the consistency role in the success and failure of the brands. of work with measurable output that is more Says he: “As a professional, I also follow some important than either of the above. Winning an of my peers on social media look at what they award can be one-off and is also an opinion of the say / post/ share there and this impacts my jury, not necessarily of the market, he stresses.

Part 3 Education qualification to be anexcellent CMO CMOs discuss the role and importance of educational background to become a good marketer: mong the youngsters coming into educational backgrounds like engineering, IT, marketing these days, apart from those liberal arts, psychology, etc are playing a crucial Awith an MBA in marketing, other role in driving the marketing communication Banking Frontiers October 2020 23 Cover Story

projects. Educational qualification offers Samco Group has a lot of engineers in its theoretical knowledge to make sense of how marketing team and they do a good job post the real world operates, yet one needs practical a bit of training and mentoring. Chirag Joshi skills to be successful in the real world. thinks that engineering and IT background CMOs appear to believe. that a person candidates can do well in marketing. Technology from any of the education disciplines can + marketing is a deadly combination for future succeed in the field of marketing. Being skilled marketing leaders, says he, elaborating: “A in marketing typically has little to do with the strength that engineering and IT candidates educational background. of the team member. have is they understand the technology and Says Rakesh Wadhwa: “I have seen some smart technology is an integral part of marketing. people who do not know, M of marketing, With some amount of experience and on-job but they had an exceptional talent for solving training, they easily cope with a candidate who problems, they were creative and they had great has specialized in marketing,” says he. empathy for customers and colleagues. With He also finds that liberal arts and psychology these qualities, they flourished in the world of candidates do well in content, social media, and marketing. Likewise, I have known people who Rakesh Wadhwa communication heavy roles. They are just more could recite marketing models in their sleep, encourages well-read and smarter to handle crucial roles, but when it came to solving complex real-life marketers to he says. problems, they floundered to make any impact.” deliver value Chandramohan Mehra feels that a marketer He adds that marketing is not something should have a curious mindset to understand that one must have technical expertise in, to beyond customer customer behaviour, and a constant urge to begin. “You can come from any discipline. expectations learn and adapt. “And these qualities will As long as you understand the drivers of eventually enable any professional to excel your business, have requisite skills such as beyond academic credentials. Equipping with problem-solving, creative thinking, effective formal education in the emerging disciplines communication, teamwork and empathy, you of design thinking and data analytics could can excel in marketing,” says he. provide a competitive edge to career aspirants According to Abhinav Iyer, in addition to in marketing,” he adds. formal professional education, one essentially needs to have a strong natural flair. “An BEYOND THE MBA & 360-DEGREE innate inclination towards marketing, towards APPROACH knowing people, understanding behaviors and Marketing today is an amalgamation of being innovative in offering bespoke, ‘creative data science, analytics, technology, fine communication led solutions’ is a key to being arts, consumer psychology, and many other an effective marketer, he says. streams. Covid has shown the need to move Most of the CMOs agree that essential fast, pivot quickly and be comfortable with traits required by the marketer include certain levels of ambiguity. It is an evolving willingness to spend time, understanding the field, so young marketers need to be adept at consumer, experimentation, curiosity, open- both the art and the science. Marketing is about mindedness, etc. influencing consumer behaviour and decisions Says Anand Bhatia: “I have had a bias for with consumer psychology and insights, hiring folks with a background in engineering enhancing customer experience by providing as the 4-year program imparts a certain rigor to personalization and automation through digital their approach. Analytics skills are important in technology, and building the brand narrative in marketing. I have folks with varied backgrounds relevant media to drive conversion. in my marketing team, and they are doing an Anjali Malhotra advises youngsters to awesome job!” Anand Bhatia look for other options apart from MBA: “A confirms that great option right now is to acquire additional TECHNOLOGY + MARKETING certification or degrees that complement your Nowadays, the role of technology is changing stakeholders, costs, skillset beyond the ubiquitous MBA degree. marketing. There is a potential rise in digital ROI stay part of Not only will they be better equipped to handle marketing after covid and BFSI companies are marketing genius the changing market scenario but will also be using social media channels to target customers DNA able to provide value to their organizations in a individually. more holistic fashion,” she argues.

24 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Sapna Desai is of the view that an people from varied fields, freshers and even educational background of engineering or IT those with no experience in marketing per field is valuable for marketing: “In a scenario of se to join the team as this brings in different digital transformation, youngsters coming into thought processes to the table and this beats marketing from engineering or IT field have groupthink,” he says. advantage. Apart from MBA in marketing, While engineers bring an analytical bachelor’s degree in any related field like approach, many times it is crucial to go liberal arts, media, and information science is beyond that. Today it is a consumer market a good fit as long as the person has a curious and therefore, all marketers need to develop a and innovative mindset to drive consumer keen sense of human/societal behaviour. preference and engagement,” says she. R. Balaji advocates 360-degree approach: It is not so much an individual, but the team “Students with degrees in psychology or that contributes to the success of a campaign, anthropology would be better placed to says Subhasis Ghosh. He believes that diversity understand the trends in consumer behaviour. in the team delivers the best outcome and hence A marketeer needs to develop a 360-degree it not just the educational background, but also approach wherein they can combine both the diversity in gender, geography, language, analytical and psychological perspectives living experiences, etc. that are important. “In to create products/services relevant to the Kotak Mahindra Life Insurance, we encourage consumers,” he says.

Part 4 Error-free marking is the goal

CMOs share the most common marketing errors that they see:

oday, digital channels allow you to a lot before launching our campaigns. We had 2 be ‘always on’ and have real-time campaigns recently - ‘LockInGoodHabits’ and Tconversations with your customers. ‘Masters’ Speak’. The first campaign was aimed However, that does not mean that customers at keeping our customers healthy and fit – both expect brands to have something to say on physically and mentally, amid the lockdowns. every single topic. For instance, in the ongoing With Masters’ Speak, we brought global pandemic situation, so many brands with thinkers, leaders and luminaries to share their all good intentions are only adding to the perspective about life post-pandemic and offer cacophony of ‘stay safe’ messages. The concern actionable solutions to customers’ concerns.” is understandable, but how are you helping The company wanted to reach out to its customers stay safe is the value you need to customers from an authentic space and be bring in your message. For this, one has gone a partner in helping them navigate through back to brand purpose and values and use them this crisis. “We were humbled by the response as filters for serving any communication. we received from the 2 campaigns and it only strengthens my assertion that marketers must THE GAP BETWEEN COMMUNICA- Subhasis Ghosh keep brand purpose at the heart of everything TION & SERVICE DELIVERY advises that every they do for customers”, says Rakesh Wadhwa. Whatever communication that organizations remark on social One of the most seen marketing errors put out, it should be treated as a service to media should be is the inability to identify and bridge the the customers and it should always offer some chasm between communication and service value to them. Rakesh Wadhwa explains: “At responded to delivery. Having an effective and well-thought Future Generali India Life insurance, we listen communication strategy complemented by a to our customers intently and our teams debate robust media plan is only like winning half the

Banking Frontiers October 2020 25 Cover Story

battle. The outcome of the other half depends align initiatives with the core purpose of on what the consumers experience during the brand.” their moment of truth with the brand, during their interaction at the touchpoints. DO NOT FORGET TO TEST! Abhinav gives the details of marketing Inventors never got their inventions right mismatch that often creeps in: “Any mismatch in the first instance; they try and test it between what customers see and what they perpetually that ultimately lead to great experience can cause notable business and innovation. A good marketing culture is to reputational loss to brands. It is often essential ‘Test coved Test’. There is no right solution for brand managers to periodically conduct to marketing challenges. Not only setting a mystery visits and keep a tab on their internal culture of testing can lead great marketing service deliveries, turnaround time, customer teams it will also lead to 10x growth in ideas. service, and customer satisfaction levels to Chirag Joshi says testing culture applies in plug such gaps and ensure there is no room all internal marketing departments. “For for doubtful positioning.” example, testing the colour of your email CTA According to Sapna Desai, brand Sapna Desai button, or trying out different landing pages authenticity plays a crucial role in what one in your performance marketing campaigns.” says and what one needs to do to match the reveals that talented “Lack of insights and research sometimes on-ground customer experience. The concept marketers challenge acts as a barrier in achieving the right of one-size-fits-all is old and done. Nowadays, their skills & marketing goal. Skipping research is one of customers demand customized solutions. It is develop ideas the most common marketing mistakes done not an easy task and entails constant listening, by the CMOs,” says Sapna Desai. adapting, and innovation, she says, stressing Anand Bhatia thinks that the most that innovation is the key to progress, so the common marketing errors seem to be excessive customer-centric brand needs to co-innovate use of memes, fads, relying on discounts/ with its customers. offers to drive business rather than any core proposition or reason to buy. It is like going by COPYING & SHORT-TERM the opinion of the highest-paid person in the SUCCESSES room to evaluate a communication/ advert etc Each brand has different objectives, rather than real consumer feedback/ testing requirements and challenges. Copying the being excessively rushed! competition might lead companies into Everyone is overloaded with content today a deadly trap. There might be extremely - be it on YouTube, emails, podcasts, twitter, specific reasons why competition is doing a Facebook, etc. Content should be such that it campaign. The business objectives and DNA adds value to the reader/viewer and should be of competitors are different. useful. One power-packed blog post is better Says Chirag Joshi: “The best benchmark than 10 in a month. is yourself and you must be constantly trying Subhasis Ghosh emphasizes on the need to do 10x better than what you did yesterday. for consistency in communication across all One of the best ways to overcome a possible relevant platforms. “Your one-point message error is to stop tracking your competition should be omnipresent, which positions you and closely focus on what your brand needs. as a thought leader within your business Thoroughly understand what your company’s community. Just like music, repeated objectives are and the best solutions, ideas, messaging has a higher chance of staying with and campaigns flow from here. Sooner you the customer. A third will be not building a will find competition copying you.” relationship with your target audience. With Currently there is a lot of emphases based Chandramohan the current social distancing norms, it is on short term results. This results in following Mehra supports getting more difficult to maintain contact the latest flavour of the season and leads to formal education in with customers. Technology plays a huge part results that are not in sync with the objectives. design thinking & here to maintain continuous dialogue. For Explains R. Balaji: “Practitioners must instance, every remark on social media should take care to ensure that adequate balance is data analytics be responded so that your customer knows maintained between short- and long-term you care,” he advocates. results. One way of doing this would be to [email protected]

26 Banking Frontiers October 2020 At Crossroads Equity Broking Transformation in India

igital brokers like Zerodha, to avail the safety associated with bank Upstox and 5 Paisa are gaining brokers and full-service brokers. Their Dexponential market share at the number of transactions are fewer than expense of the full-service legacy brokers, the millennials with discount brokerages, focusing on millennials who have a larger but their transaction sizes and average risk appetite than traditional investors. revenue per customer are far higher than Their business philosophy of being smart clients of discount brokerage houses. fintechs in the BFSI domain has worked Many full-service brokers have wonders to disrupt the business of full- jumped onto the discount brokerage service brokers by being able to identify bandwagon to emulate the growth of new and service the emerging clients’ needs at age discount brokerage houses – at the an optimum cost. cost of cannibalizing their own profitable New clients today prefer working with business and creating a fair amount of service providers who use their business dissonance with existing high net worth profits to give back to society in a large customers. The success of managing high measure in terms of knowledge, training net worth clients has been enhanced by and development. It is this critical area of full-service brokers by incorporating new customer education, where Zerodha digital channels. has carved out an enviable niche for itself Santanu Syam sees a risk in the industry. in the carrot of freebies and FULL-SERVICE BROKERS Zerodha has been growing at a pace cashback, which are now an The lowest brokerage is not the USP that exemplifies the online no-frills accepted market practice, that attracts such high net worth clients. digital model at minimal cost to the but are contrary to extant Many large full-service brokerage customer. Zerodha is and will be, houses, in trying to emulate the growth for a protracted period in the future, regulations of discount brokerages, have forced the largest broker in the industry their clients and franchisees to embrace - followed by ICICI Securities and an enviable leadership position. the discount brokerage models without HDFC Securities. Zerodha’s growth How do the numbers compare for giving an option to such clients to choose has been accomplished on the back of discount and full-service brokers? A full- what is good for them. It is only natural clients’ trust, client education, ethics service broker typically spends `3000- that the client segment, which is willing and transparency, and a zero-debt 4000 on customer acquisition and earns to pay more for advisory and full-service book. The sustainability of its success an average revenue of `6000-9000. For a broking, will move out to bank brokers has been validated by the fact that it discount broker, both figures are smaller: and the likes of MOSL / JM Financial does not spend on advertising and `500-700 and `1800-2000. as they have grown their assets built on promotion and the exponential growth trust and relationship with their financial can be ascribed to favorable referrals of THE SECURITY FACTOR service partners through the years. Full- existing clients. Its foray into a larger There is clearly a market segment, of service brokers have state of the art space in BFSI with NBFC and AMC informed investors, who are willing to technology, which their customers enjoy licenses further empowers it to disrupt pay for the safety and services offered by but more importantly, the comfort of the the market significantly and establish a full-service broker. Established players safety of their assets, and the interaction like ICICI Securities, HDFC Securities, with the fund managers / relationship A comparison between Zerodha Axis Securities, Sharekhan (BNP Paribas), managers is a necessity for this segment. and ICICI Securities MOSL and JM Financial, cater to investors The advantage that many of the full- Zerodha ICICI Securities Particulars and traders who have an inherent comfort service brokers and bank brokers enjoy (Discount) (Full-service) of the custody of their assets with bank is that they have strategically diversified Market share 14.3% 9.7% brokers / brokers who have a significant their revenue streams to build balance Revenue `11 bn `17 bn brick and mortar footprint. These sheet resilience. Against an erstwhile EBIDTA `4.3 bn `4.9 bn customers are educated, experienced 90% contribution of brokerage to the Margin 39.1% 28.50% in stock markets, have a conservative total revenue stream, today most of the MarketCap/ `136 bn `155 bn risk appetite, look at long-term capital large broking houses have less than 40% Valuation appreciation and are willing to pay more dependence on brokerage to the total

Banking Frontiers October 2020 27 At Crossroads

Bombay-Stock-Exchange revenue. Most of the full-service broking base, is completely debt-free, has houses have evolved to grow third party no expenses towards marketing or distribution, wealth management, advertising and the growth is only lending, AMC, PMS, PE funds, Advisory through word of mouth (70% of and ARCs. The most significant new client acquisition is through transition has been that they have revised referrals and the balance through their business model to move away from direct digital channels; its knowledge- a transaction-based revenue model to a sharing platform Varsity (900,000 fee / service based revenue model. The appp downloads by customers) and advantage of this revised pricing strategy Finshots (incubation partner) have is that it is not adversely affected by the had very strong success in attracting cyclical trends of the broking industry first-time users /new customers. where revenues can be seriously dented It has been growing at 100% month if there is a negative market sentiment on month. resulting in reduced participation and u A case in example is Upstox, a discount trading volumes. broker which had a client base of The full-service brokers have also 100,000 in June 2013, whch has practically 100% WFH (Work from created a very strong profitable B2B (sub grown to 1 million clients in the next 6 Home) and a huge reduction of broker / franchisee with brick and mortar months with a projection of additional premises rentals/closing of all brick footprint typically in locations where they 1 million clients in the next 6 months. and mortar branch offices across do not have their own branches) client The upside is 70% of its client base the country resulting in at least 50% base and the business partners contribute is active. reduction of operating expenses for as much as 15-20% of the new client u The trading in the retail segment is digital brokers who have adopted acquisition every month. skewed towards derivatives trading WFH as a standard model on a (futures and options) - 70% of the permanent basis. INDUSTRY TRENDS total trading volumes are in derivatives u PBT in April-May-June quarter 2020 of The retail focus, digital transformation trading - a high-risk segment for most large brokers have grown in excess and growth in the equity markets retail investors. of 50% vis a vis the same period in 2019. are inspiring but the unprecedented u Cash segment equity volumes are optimism needs to be quickly toned down 30% of the total trading volumes but RISKS THAT GO WITH GROWTH with caution. most of the volumes (25% of the total 1. With every account opened, brokers are u There has been an addition of 2.5 trading volumes) in this segment are crediting free ETF (exchange-traded million new accounts in the equity in intraday trades. fund) units in the client account and broking industry between April to u Demat accounts have grown from 23 selling it within 7 days. This results June 2020. Most of the new entrants million in 2015 to 36 million in 2019 in all accounts, which are opened are are from tier 2 & 3 cities and 70% to 41 million in 2020. shown as activated. This practice, are millennials. All discount brokers u Depository participants have grown though yielding positive results for have client acquisition growth rates in from 854 in 2015 to 875 in 2019 to 899 the brokers, may not be reflective of excess of 25% vis-a-vis last year. The in 2020. the correct numbers of clients who full-service brokers and bank brokers u Cash equity brokers have grown from are genuinely active. This is also the are rapidly losing market share and 6147 in 2015 to 2315 in 2019 to 4249 primary reason that bank brokers have their growth rates are festering in in 2020. such a large passive client base, as they single digits quite contrary to the u Derivatives equity brokers have grown are not following this practice of forced growth of the discount brokers. from 2990 in 2015 to 2435 in 2019 to activation of all clients. u Brokers who are completely digital and 3460 in 2020. 2. The client referral program introduced selling a discount brokerage structure u Average Daily Cash Equity Turnover by the exchanges now permits brokers (delivery trades are free) have grown has doubled in the last 4 years. (`240 to open accounts based on a friend or at over 30% month on month since billion in 2017 to `400 billion in 2020 family member referral. The broker March 2020. - NSE + BSE). shares the brokerage earned from u Activation rates of such brokers in u Average Daily Derivative Equity such clients with the client who has June 2020 have grown in excess Turnover has grown 5X in last 4 years. referred the account. This has created of 30% vis a vis activation rates of (`3.2 trillion in 2017 to `14 trillion in a multilevel marketing model in March 2020. 2020 - NSE). the broking industry and clients are u Zerodha with a 3 million customer u The pandemic has resulted in generating additional income from the

28 Banking Frontiers October 2020 trading activity of their friends/families - whom they have referred to open an account with the broker. The non- conformity with regulations that permit sharing of income only with registered entities in the market (ie, registered franchisees/ sub-brokers/authorized persons) can become a difficult issue for the broking industry in the future. 3. All accounts are being opened free of account opening charges and delivery trades are completely free. This implies that the revenue model of the brokers is dependent on the trading volumes by retail investors in the derivatives segment (options and futures). The entire brokerage fee is client deposits is not permitted and is very risky for retail investors and dependent on the trading by clients in all client deposits have to be flushed most will end up making losses the derivative segment (where clients out every 90 days. due to a limited understanding of are charged `20 per order), which options trading. results in clients being pushed into the IN CONCLUSION u Client retention, client loyalty and derivative segment where it is highly u Market intermediaries, who invest client life cycle with a broker will be unlikely the retail investors will make and focus on educating investors and irrelevant as portability across trading money and grow their capital. transparently sharing knowledge of the platforms is easy and seamless. 4. The high dependence by brokers on markets with clients, are completely u In spite of exponential growth in the interest income (40-50% of the digital (SMAC), have the capital to run client acquisition, overall revenues total income in the balance sheet) a debt-free business, have a state-of-the- will remain more or less static for from clients implies that there is a art trading platform with very simple UI the industry due to the predominant bias of pushing retail clients to margin /UX, and deploy significant amounts in focus on minimum price / free services funding (monetize free collateral for CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) being the USP of most players in the enhanced trading limits) without will rule the roost in the years ahead. discount brokerage domain and in a proper evaluation of the product u Discount brokers who have created price cutting to capture market share. appropriateness for clients. In any Platform as a service (PaaS) will u The imminent changes in regulations, case, the high interest cost of 18-22% attract millennial and high-volume especially on cash margin collections for such a margin funding facility trading customers. and related penalties will result implies that the retail investor will not u Trading volumes skewed towards in a dip in delivery volumes in the be able to make money at such a high derivatives, with no advisory support cash segment. funding cost. or handholding from discount brokers, Santanu Syam is former COO & CRO, Angel Broking 5. Cash discounts, cashback and incentive vouchers are doled out to induce clients to open accounts PSU Banking 2.0: Merge & Surge and trade. This carrot of freebies / cashback, though now an accepted market practice, is contrary to extant regulations that prohibit the use of any incentives to induce the clients to trade. 6. Large US brokers such as Robin Hood, Charles Schwab, E-trade also provide free delivery trades to their customers. They have the leeway of making float Summary: CXOs of leading PSU Banks. The mergers of several PSU banks are income from the deposits of their creating a shift towards PSU Banking 2.0. A conversation with CXOs of leading PSU clients and earn significant interest Banks to understand their perspectives on challenges and solutions. income. In India, float income from

Banking Frontiers October 2020 29 Conference Highlights Building Board Enrolments Banking Frontiers organized a web panel discussion CISO at Central Bank of India, Rajarshi Pal, Asst Prof on ‘Building Board Enrolments’, to explore interactions at IDRBT and Jt Coordinator for Cyber Security, Kiran between CISOs and company boards and CXOs of Belsekar, CISO at Aegon Life Insurance Co, Rajesh B, BFSI organizations with respect to cyber vulnerabilities CISO, India Post Payments Bank, and Adam Palmer, and threats. Ashalatha Govind, Head - Operations at Chief Cyber Security Strategist at Tenable, were the C-Edge, and former Group CISO at SBI, KM Reddy, participants at the discussion, which was moderated CISO at Union Bank of India & UK, Suryanarayanan K., by security expert L.S. Subramanian.

L.S. Subramanian: Can a CISO assure authentication and OTP, there is residual K.M. Reddy: How do we communicate the Board that the organization is well risk – OTP being exposed to malware. It is East, West, North and South? It is necessary protected against all cyber threats? necessary that CISOs present such scenarios to cover tactical, operational and strategic Ashalatha Govind: There is no and case studies to the board so that the issues. It is called 3,3,4,5 model. absolute protection in cybersecurity. Board board can initiate to engage experts. Kiran Belsekar: We have 100-odd members need to be educated and even Adam Palmer: 90% of financial activities to handle but limited resources. RBI guidelines suggest so. It is therefore a services organizations have suffered an So, we made 3 buckets. First is prevention regulatory compliance issue too. We need to attack. There is a gap in communicating and protection, second is detection and the inform the board about the changing threat possibilities of such attacks and the attacks third automation. We have a roadmap for landscape and how we need to handle it. per se to the board because of the IT vs 12 months. The fact is that we function in a The board members would want to know business language. Organizations tend to complex devOps environment. all the threats and risks, and whether the give too much of focus on capacity building institution is able to detect and respond in and little on prioritization. LS. Subramanian: How are you keeping minimum time. They also want to know Rajesh B: Board members today have your security program aligned to business about remediation and do not wish to firm understanding of technology. The goals? What challenges have you seen to tolerate even one vulnerability. board always keeps on asking whether the overcome this? K.M. Reddy: Board enrolment is one organization is 100% secure. When we Ashalatha Govind: Security experts of the toughest tasks for CISOs. Boards CISOs present a security posture, the key must understand business domain. Security normally want to know 4 things: Security challenge is exceptions. All issues cannot has no context without business. When a strategy, Preparedness, Are we 100% safe be fixed as there are dependencies on OS, product has to be launched without full and Do we have complete visibility in terms OEM, applications, etc. So we have to security evaluation, the IT buy-in should of end points, servers, networks, laptops, give firm commitment on compensating also be there. In such situations, we suggest BC terminals, etc. controls. Sometimes CISOs are not clear on beta launch, open only to employees. Rajarshi Pal: Today, boards are in much compensating controls. OEMs also do not K.M. Reddy: Compliance must come better position in terms of knowledge about bring out solutions for all vulnerabilities. first, business second. CISOs have to cybersecurity because of the RBI mandate While some architectures are claimed to be re-align their activities to achieve business that they need to be familiar with the threat very strong, such as HSM, auditors ask for delivery and take a balanced approach to perceptions. CISOs should be absolutely confirmations, which may be missing. risk. In practical tems, risks need not be transparent in talking to the board and brought down to zero before launch. how to handle residual risk. For example, L.S. Subramanian: What strategies have Adam Palmer: A truly aligned risk of authentication of a remote employee you used in the past to overcome the CISO must be able to address security in or even a customer. Even with 2-factor difficulties in this area? business terms.

Adam Palmer Ashalatha Govind B Rajesh K Suryanarayanan

30 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Kiran Belsekar KM Reddy Rajarshi Pal LS Subramanian

Rajesh B: At our bank, all controls are system needs to be evaluated, whether cover device and application. We have to deployed as per compliance. BCP and DR exposed to internet or not. Security is not add new dimensions of authenticating testing are done as per plan. The challenge separate from software development. Also, users. When a session cannot be trusted, we is engaging busines heads from security security is everybody’s job, not just that of need continuous authentication to probe perspective as they want new products to CISO. Developers should also know what whether the session has not been hijacked. be launched very fast. the vulnerabilities are and that they are Data pushed through APIs should not addressed. Every quarter we are doing be trusted. L.S. Subramanian: How are CISOs using vulnerability assessment and informing the Adam Palmer: The key for open VM to prioritise risks and set strategy? management accordingly. banking is implementing strong access Rajarshi Pal: To be in line with the fast- Adam Palmer: Tenable encourages management and prioritization. Basic changing landscape, we need to bring in organizations to move to vulnerability cyber hygiene is even more important in new security technologies and paradigms. management based on ML. There is need open banking. Threat intelligence helps organizations take to compare asset groups and compare with proactive steps. Other paradigm is dark peers. We can reduce risk over time with L.S. Subramanian: What is your wish list for web monitoring to understand the modus compliance at the bottom to risk based VM your sector as a CISO today? What needs operandi of new attacks. In earlier times at the top. to transform according to you? security experts used to work on alerts from Kiran Belsekar: While we have a Ashalatha Govind: There is need a SOC. Now specialized roles are coming in vulnerability management calendar, if we future-proof solution, irrespective of users, vogue like threat hunters who go deep to have to shift left, the organization needs to technologies, etc. find out if there is any kind of penetration be quicker and faster. The security team has K.M. Reddy: The question is how to into the organization. to pitch into each step in the lifecycle. We improve SOC analytics and productivity Adam Palmer: Lots of blind spots are are planning on this. We are trying to put and how to improve detection time and emerging. Legacy approach to identifying guardrails in each and every method and response time. Also, I would wish if there risks are failing. Security teams can never awaiting feedback. could be 100% patch management. be large enough to chase after every risk Rajesh B: Earlier, version changes were Suryanarayanan: I will yearn for 100% and vulnerability. CISOs should know all not very frequent. Now we do vulnerability security awareness among employees, the assets that could be exploited. management drills every quarter. Some customers and other stake holders. Kiran Belsekar: Most devices by versions of Linux and Apache have been Rajarshi Pal: I wish cost of security default are becoming IoT enabled. From upgraded, but we may not need it. This technologies comes down. Users have to be cloud perspective, there is need to build creates thousands of vulnerabilities. So, VM aware of the attacks. cloud security. The crucial issue is how to becomes a check box. Rajesh B: There must be cybersecurity give faster feedback to the development in environment. I should not be waiting for teams. Rather than having a knee-jerk L.S. Subramanian: How do you see open regulation. reaction, it is better to do risk assessment banking from security perspective? L.S. Subramanian: In conclusion, I early in the lifecycle. Even HR is getting Ashalatha Govind: RBI has allowed would say the consensus is that security involved today because of the lockdown. aggregators to come in, who can connect should be for organization before it is made to banks with APIs. RBI has guidelines for applicable to business. We do not have L.S. Subramanian: Security as a business aggregators not to store data. So, there is the enough people who think of security. Every enabler has found acceptance by many question of how to have control and security Indian is at risk. The attack surface today is financial institutions. What has been your on fintechs and startups. If API is configured moving very fast. It is good to hear that RBI experience? in a loose manner, there can be data leakage is putting emphasis on making the board K.M. Reddy: Vulnerability management and frauds. Fraudsters will start attacking of institutions aware of the cybersecurity also involves detection and response. VM banks, customers and fintechs. threats. I believe the more we are educated should cover end-to-end including cloud, Rajarshi Pal: I advocate zero trust and are able to identify the problem in the containers, mobile devices, etc. security model, which has 5 pillars - device, nick of the time, and fix it, it will be a cyclic Suryanarayan: Vulnerability application, user, session and data. For system and like a 6-Sigma process. management is part of our duty. Every open banking, zero trust model does not [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 31 Conference Report PSU Banking 2.0: Merge & Surge

In the second in a series of web panel discussions organized by Banking Frontiers on the themes of amalgamation and lockdown, senior executives of public sector banks share new insights. A report:

e are engaged but not yet KNOWLEDGE PARTNERS married’ is how Pravin Sharma, WGeneral Manager - IT, Union Intel Innovation Built-in Bank of India, described the status of the invites you to 3-way merger of the bank with Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank, adding there has to be a lot of preparations to PSU Banking 2.0 - MERGE & SURGE REGISTER me made for the integration of the IT 26th August 2020 I Live at 4.00pm-5.00pm departments of the 3 banks. “We have achieved a lot in terms of HR, regional offices, administration offices, field general offices and reorganization of corporate verticals. However, currently PRAVIN SHARMA PRASANNA RANADE AMOL PAI IT is in discussion stage on how it can GMIT, Sales Director, Union Bank of India Chief Technology Officer, be taken forward. Studies have been Dell Technologies, State Bank of India Mumbai going on and service providers have been onboarded about migrating the core. Core is only one piece of IT. Channels NAGA MALLIKARJUNA GIDUGU SATYA NARAYAN BABU NAIR CISO, Information Security, CEO & Group Publisher, are much more important and risk also Syndicate Bank Bank of Baroda Banking Frontiers arises there, including customer issues. We have gone through each application in terms of customer and IT perspectives and finalized what functions will be there policy, but only as exceptions,” he said. turnaround in terms of implementation in the merged entity. It may take some He said the data centers set up by and usage.” says he. time,” he says. the bank are fairly rigid and during He also points out that when Reiterating that amalgamation pandemic, flexibility was required. Also, something new comes, there is a jitter from IT perspective is key, Sharma said there was always a scare about cloud. of whether it will deliver what we want. existing systems and services have to “We now understand that the pandemic “For example, when we introduced remain and in parallel, one has to do has erased that as long as you put your chatbot, we had to spend a lot of time to reorganization of products. Besides, core controls in place. So, the investments in train it. Maturity is reducing time from banking migration is a big task and UAT the last 2-3 years in cloud have paid off concept stage to go-live stage. Also, now will change the game. in the 6 months. We can hive off certain everything does not happen in the bank’s zones to fintechs,” he says. premises and data center. It could happen CLOUD INVESTMENT PAYOFF Amol Pai also states that the bank has in cloud or in partner premises,” says he. Amol Pai, CTO, State Bank of India, always focused on improving CX. “The He also points out that Enterprise states that the pandemic is more exciting pandemic has brought in one change Service Bus buffers the front end from than amalgamation. “The struggle is to in digitization – the CX for the bank the back end, so changes can happen at make technology continue the way you employee has improved. The screens one end without affecting the other end. want it to work. The lockdown kept have become less cumbersome,” says he. getting extended. We focused on keeping TOWNHALL MEETS the lights on. We moved teams into 3 IMPORTANCE OF USE CASE Satyanarayana Gidugu, Head Audit different locations and ensured that they According to him, it is not the technology - Ahmedabad Zone, Bank of Baroda, do not mix with each other. Then, we but the use case that is important. “Two points out that the formal merger process enabled them to work from home. First, years ago, it was being pushed for what of the bank with Vijaya Bank and Dena we enabled the production teams, and the customer will do next. Now it is about Bank started with townhall meetings and then the changed the bank teams. Most fraud and delinquency. A lot of radical senior management meetings. Products MNCs and IT companies had a WFH things may not happen. I see a shorter from all the 3 banks having best customer

32 Banking Frontiers October 2020 patronage were selected. Similarly, minimum service charges from the 3 banks were chosen. As regards IT integration, he said it is mid-way through. Vijay Bank and Dena Bank are on Finacle 7, while Bank of Baroda is on Finacle 10. “Nearly 50% of Vijaya Bank has migrated to Finacle 10. Even, we at Bank of Baroda had faced a lot of challenges and issues when we migrated from Finacle 7 to Finacle 10. Retail processes like loan automation and trade finance operations have now been migrated and the bank is able to offer the best possible rates for the customers,” he elaborated.

BUDDY SCHEME He also mentions about the buddy amalgamation across banks. It is nothing people who could not come to the main scheme the bank has started for the staff but amalgamation of database. This is, office,” he said. of Vijaya Bank and Dena Bank. “Now however, taking time. At Canara Bank Prasanna Ranade, Head – BFSI, Dell, we have 3 persons for all major roles – 1 ATM integration is now happening. We said Dell has always had a WFH policy. from each bank. We are also offering the will then take up the integration of other But this is the first time it is being done best packages to the staff among all the delivery channels,” he says. for extended durations. “For example, banks,” he added. He says the bank is going for cloud as laptop is designed to work in office 24 He pointed out that the migration it is flexible and overnight enhancement hours, but we don’t run ACs at home all process is making use of frameworks of infrastructure is difficult. “The way the time. Also, work hours have gone up developed by ISACA and ICAI where the digital transactions are increasing and drastically. This is a lifetime experience,” cardinal principles are defined. The bank physical transactions are decreasing, he added. has also engaged auditors, who helped planning infrastructure for this without According to Mallikarjuna Rao of and guided the bank in the process. cloud is challenging. We had actually Canara Bank, the number of alerts in He pointed out that JPMorgan Chase planned for this in 2016-17,” he adds. SOC is humongous and unmanageable. had migrated their systems in 2 hours Pravin Sharma of Union Bank of “So, we need AI & ML. Also, SOC is after the 9/11 attack. Migration of IT India said banking of the future will be redundant as it managed only a portion systems is a learning process that should more technology driven. In India, he said of the security and that portion is coming be well preserved, he added. communication link is the weakest link down. OEMs are also coming out with new Gidugu also said the capacity of the and the customer base for internet and technologies for using AI and analytics. back office of the bank at Gandhinagar mobile banking is pretty low. They have to provide confidence to the is quite sufficient to cater to the needs of He was also emphatic that banking is customer,” he said. the merged entity. definitely looking forward to AI & ML. He explained that physical is “The use cases differ from bank to bank. becoming a hybrid model, which is POLICIES, THEN PROCESSES The biggest use case I see is fraud control reducing the load on employees, and Canara Bank, which merged with to improve transaction security. More the more of robotics… that is the road ahead. Syndicate Bank, began the integration data, more the technology can help you He is of the view that RPA is very less with policies first and then processes. J.N. and this is the area you can focus on,” in PSU banks. Cloud, according to him, is Mallikarjun Rao, In Charge - Governance, he said. like a flight journey, where there could be Risk, Compliance, SOC at the bank, says turbulence compared to road trip. both the banks have been using the same WFH CHALLENGE Satyanarayana Gidugu of Bank platform - Flexcube - and the best of He also pointed out that that challenge of Baroda said the bank has started the lot was chosen for the benefit of the the bank faced in the HR domain was contactless lending, which is similar to customers and the employees. “Cultural ‘work from home’. “For a person working 59-minute lending. Fraud risk is a key integration is important and PSU banks from home, it is difficult to figure out how risk, he said, adding for lost revenue cases have experience of amalgamations much delivery is being done. Working AI should be used. within the bank, and now we are doing from branch was used for service provider [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 33 Cyber Security Fintechs A.C.T. on Security Threats Fintechs have adopted multiple measures to combat security threats. Among them, the 3 key ones are Analytics, Controls and Technologies (A.C.T.):

ecent reports indicate that India have changed. Now, the network is the has one of the highest numbers of internet. We have faced attacks on our Rinternet users in the world, and it application, a lot of phishing attacks is also among the top 10 countries facing on the domain, email, etc. We were not cyberattacks. Cybersecurity issues are not ready for WFH, when it was started in limited to hacking and money-related March, so we have enabled whatever we frauds but they have become a threat can to continue our business activities. to national security as well. Technology We have allowed our team members to experts are confident that the new use their devices for official purposes. cybersecurity bill will be a game-changer, This was also a threat for us.” especially for the BFSI industry. Bibhu Krishna, however, feels things As per Acronis Cyber Readiness have improved from March to August. Report 2020, as much as 56% of the The insurtech company is also facing Indian companies have increased threats from the other similar companies their IT spending significantly in the as they are copying its website content, past months, nearly 2 times the global domain and other things that average. The challenge for organizations Policybazaar.com does. is that managing the protection of data Anand Kumar Bajaj is across the company network and all those TECHNOLOGIES & PARTNERS new devices using a stack of different bothered that WFH culture Most of the companies are PCI-DSS solutions is expensive, time-consuming may increase cyber crimes certified to ensure that all transactions and complicated. The lack of integration are done through a secure network also creates gaps in the organization’s working from home and browsing any in compliance with Payment Security defences and cybercriminals are restricted sites may lead to company Council standards and ISO 2700 certified exploiting it. laptops getting infected with malware. international standards to manage Banking Frontiers queried technology The other challenge, according to him is information security. experts from new age insurance, fintech that in case of any DDOS attack, server Digit Insurance has implemented and insurtech companies about the type lock, or power outage problem, there single sign-on, secure tunnels and of frauds they faced during the lockdown, is no option but to visit the main office communicated the latest security technical and non-technical initiatives or data center for a resolution. Because information to its employees and taken by them, awareness activities for of the ongoing pandemic, that can be a customers. The company’s technology employees and customers, etc. significant inconvenience. partners are Forcepoint for DLP, Trend Vishal Shah, Head of Data Sciences at Micro for endpoint security and Cisco for TRENDING FRAUDS Digit Insurance Company, confirms that network security. The main concern of payments services the company has faced impersonation Policybazaar.com has taken provider PayNearby during the lockdown frauds, misuse of the system, data access several technology initiatives to ensure was the threat of individuals claiming to rights and phishing attacks during the cybersecurity like analytics and system be representatives of the company or lockdown period. tools on a monthly cycle for cybersecurity. posing as customer care executives and Bibhu Krishna, Head - IT & Infra Avast Antivirus, Akamai Technologies getting customers to divulge sensitive at Policybazaar.com, shares the list of and Check Point Software Technologies information. Anand Kumar Bajaj, MD frauds faced by the company: “Because of are its key technology partners.” & CEO at PayNearby, says that the covid, people have started working from PayNearby too has undertaken quite company’s employees are currently home and the parameters of security a few precautionary measures to counter

34 Banking Frontiers October 2020 any threats faced by them, restricting losses to the company. “But with WFH becoming a norm, our team members are scattered, it is difficult for them to reach the right person in case of a security threat. We have taken steps like alerting and monitoring in case of such occurrences.” PayNearby is running an awareness campaign called ‘Swachh Transaction, Swachh Bharat’ with videos and posters in multiple languages urging our Digital Pradhans (retail partners) to be vigilant while conducting transactions. For the rural consumers who perform transactions at the company’s digital touchpoints, these videos create awareness about cyber fraud, reminding Vishal Shah is concerned them that PayNearby retailers will never Bibhu Krishna sees copying of about the rise of impersonation ask for their login ID, password, OTP website content and domain frauds during the lockdown PIN, or any sensitive information. as an emerging threat AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS cyber frauds during the lockdown. It Digit Insurance sends latest information Anand Kumar Bajaj has the final has strong access controls with maker- about cybersecurity to its employees word: “All of our campaigns help us to checker restrictions to ensure that regularly to keep them updated. Says combat the menace of imposters who multiple people are involved in processing Vishal Shah: “We create awareness often impersonate retailers to dupe a transaction. Access to critical systems among the users of our system about the customers. Our communications reach is restricted to VPN-only solutions. policies, do’s & don’ts and best practices our customers through the mobile Direct access to production data center about WFH, strengths of our advanced application, web portal, YouTube, social is disallowed even via a VPN. threat protection systems, auditing of platforms and WhatsApp channels.” Anand Kumar Bajaj provides details: systems and application rights.” [email protected] “We have moved all key personnel to Policybazaar.com has introduced Virtual Desktop Interface, or VDIs with online training sessions in their strict installation controls so that they are internal CRM system. Bibhu Krishna Customer Experience not connected to the office environment. gives details: “We used to arrange – The AI Way Open internet related work can be cybersecurity manual training sessions carried out on the office laptop while in our office, but after WFH, scheduling development/recon/tech support is only the manual training sessions has become done via VDIs where internet access is a challenge. We have introduced online severely restricted. Code deployment is training when our team members log in done only via a ‘user’ rights cred in an to the CRM system. Offline things have Manish Goyal automated manner to minimize the risk become online because of covid.” Senior Partner & of transmission of malware from office He also shares the details about Global Leader, Artificial Intelligence (AI), IBM laptops or the internet.” the awareness campaign: “We share the dos and don’ts like do not share Summary: There NON-TECHNICAL INITIATIVES your password, do not log in to public is a plethora of opportunities that AI In addition, tech companies have taken Wi-Fi, do not click the URL if you are brings into experiential several non-technical initiatives to guide not confident about it and we regularly engagements in BFSI. their customers. Policybazaar.com is educate our customers about it. Our AI has powered a seamless experience educating and training its employees information security campaigns are more across multiple channels and reduced and customers about frauds. Bibhu says textual, and there is less video content in human intervention for non-essential before covid, team members used to them. It has been a learning curve for us, activities. easily inform the authorities in case of and I believe digital is the way forward.”

Banking Frontiers October 2020 35 Web Panel Discussion Microfinance Industry - Insights & Trends Leading microfinance experts discuss the current scenario of micro- lending business in India in a web panel discussion. Edited excerpts:

Nitin Chugh, MD & CEO, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank: Firstly, we need to analyze the situation that we are going through and that will determine the co-drivers. In addition, we need to find ways of living with covid until everybody gets vaccinated. Financial institutions are functioning during the pandemic by adjusting working models. Secondly, there is a change in the behavior of customers who have adopted habits that are unlikely to go away. Most of them will prefer remote interactions and transactions that they can do on their own. A large chunk of our customers will want to transact with the banks and MFIs differently. Thirdly, we have taken the step from the regulatory points for the benefit of our customers. become easier. point of view in terms of liquidity inclusion, We are rolling out branches and enabling Growth is not the issue in the ie measures that will bring back demand for points that are around that branch and this microfinance industry; there is a large credit in a healthy manner. These things will has helped us in combining the alternate underserved population, which makes it also define the market components, and ways of collection. We have clearly moved probably a bigger possibility for growth. profoundly, we will have serious players left from 16% of the alternate ways of collecting We need to think about what will happen in the market. The microfinance business digital or cashless, to nearly 37% in June post covid. Do financial institutions need to attracts a lot of players; for example, State 2020 through the non-traditional ways understand what are the drivers of growth? Bank of India is making a strong push for of collecting and depositing from the Will it be the existing customer? There will re-entering microfinance business. This customers. This gives us the confidence that be work around the existing customers. means that it is a good business to be in. this model can be made to work. It does not How you will see them in 12-18 months? Financial institutions that do not have have to be only based on a digital interface. We need to manage our credit with a clear a long-term vision of being in this industry It will also require a lot of education open understanding that there is a bit of a and serving these customers will most likely and training for users. Customers are rupture of the balance sheet. We need to find their way out. The microfinance market unwilling to come for the center meetings see how they get prepared as we improve will remain only for the companies which in the metro cities and after covid they do our risk exposures. In this period, most have invested in technology and which not want to gather in groups. We need to companies will think of consolidation. are taking all the regulatory intervention find alternatives that should be viable and The whole loan process is completely very seriously and have a long runway and scalable, we need to give the option to the digitized. Large MFI companies and a roadmap ahead of them. This will open customers and use this time to educate and small finance banks are small fintech the path of consolidation in the industry. train them. in themselves. However, there are 2 Cashless and digital are not the same and departments - sales and collection - which there is a need to provide alternatives Ajay Kanwal, MD & CEO, Jana Small are still not digitized. Sales is not digitized, to the customers. We need to provide Finance Bank because there is less information about the alternate ways of collecting repayments There has been always a challenge customers. The collection process is not from customers. We must expand available about the lack of credit at the bottom digitized as most of our customers deal options like wallets, tie-ups and we are of the pyramid, and covid has further in cash and maintain cash. Wallets have trying to use different platforms, which raised it. I suspect that covid crisis will brought the positive change around it, but will give us access to many other apps and probably make the rich and poor divide it is an exceedingly small proportion. consistently wallets to deal with. even starker. The positive of the covid In the coming months, Jana Small Ujjivan Small Finance Bank has made crisis is that banks, finance companies Finance Bank will be focusing on getting back an alternate arrangement for collections. and customers have become more digital, on track to get the right credit. Innovation is We have a tie-up with Airtel Payments Bank and it will lead to more formalization, the key piece of relationship and use of digital and we are using its points as our collection and credit to the underserved will methods in the coming months. We will

36 Banking Frontiers October 2020 work harder to get customers by using the but anything more than that would mean a Street vendors are important credit proper mechanism of saving and transacting significant hit as far as costing is concerned. borrowers now. The most important thing money, and collection plays a major role in Every household has had some cash flow is how to retain one’s existing customers. it. NPCI and QR codes have helped in our to be able to pay rather than take the full How can I make digital from the lenders’ collections and we are incentivizing our moratorium. perspective and convincing the borrowers staff and customers to go digital. Nearly 10 The microfinance portfolios are more in to get into the digital ecosystem? During -15% of the money is coming from the digital the semi-urban and rural areas and there is the lockdown period, we have reached out channels, which is a big change compared to a lesser impact of lockdown in these areas to our financial institution partners and pre-covid times. It is a good step and we are compared to urban areas. We have achieved started working with them. in the right direction. 70-75% collections in July 2020. There are There were collection scorecards, which geographies which have achieved 85-90% were mainly to give lenders insights about Manoj Nambiar, MD, Arohan Financial collections and there are geographies which the portfolio and recoveries. We came up Services have done 50%. This shows diversification with something incredibly unique, which There is an increase in the realization in the sector. was a collection benchmarking, comparing about the formal credit line. 2 years ago, them with peers of the industry. It has NABARD and fintech did a study in which Navin Chandani, MD & CEO, CRIF helped them because if your customer is they found that 42.4% of adult Indians had High Mark not paying you but paying somebody else, borrowed money, of whom 8% actually India is a very credit hungry country it was a good insight. borrowed from a formally registered and there are large opportunities in the Is it about the collection workflow institution. RBI governed institutions have country irrespective of covid or not. In the to prioritize? Who needs to be in touch been able to reach only 8% of customers and lending industry, financial institutions are with if there is a requirement? Should an the rest have managed the credits through looking for providing end-to-end digital emergency or top-up loan be given to the friends, relatives, local money lenders, and journey to their customers. Things like individual? The workflow was important private finance companies. There is still rise in smartphone penetration and video for creating scorecards and putting them 50-70% of the untouched market. The KYC provide frictionless and presence- on top of the brain of the decision engine. business is coming back to normalcy after less service to customers. There is empathy During the lockdown period, we did a the serious lockdown, and there is still local towards the existing customers. Analytics lot of work around collection, upsell and lockdowns in different parts of the country, is playing the key role in emergency loan, cross-sell. people have used up their household top-up loan, etc. [email protected] savings, so they have no other option, but to actually talk to people like us or go back to their lenders and talk about the credit line. Recently, we were discussing with the Are you a Communications Psychologist looking RBI Governor that we have estimated the demand for emergency loans of `5000- for an exciting career where you can use your `10,000 from our existing and regular knowledge and apply your creativity? customers to be over `10 billion. We serve around 60 million clients Banking Frontiers is looking for YOU to take our today and even if you take two-thirds of communications to the next level. Help us improve people that take around `5000-`10,000 our articles, questions, presentations, videos, loan, it is about `10 billion market and the letters, social media posts, etc. Guide us to make demand for credit is going to spike. our content appealing, easy to comprehend, Traditionally we used to have a hectic unambiguous and impactful. Empower us to activity period in the last 10 days of the deliver a magical experience to our customers. year ending, but most of us have muted numbers for March 2020. The priority You must have a degree in psychology and mastery over English for us as a sector was to explain the language. If you understand digital media tools and gamification, moratorium to the customers, and we have that will be helpful, though it is not essential. become the financial advisor to our clients. If you think you are the right person for this position, please We have advised customers that when email some samples of your work along with your CV to the moratorium is available, use it only [email protected] when needed it and use it if your activity is completely stopped or you are not in a Our workplace is in Marol, Andheri (East), Mumbai. position to pay. Also take it for 1-2 months,

Banking Frontiers October 2020 37 Case Studies When an SFC fails in its commitments In the second case study on how the Telangana Industrial Health Clinic (TIHCL) restores sick MSMEs to prime of health, we discuss the case of Sri Datta Sai Shilpa Industries:

ri Datta Sail Shilpa Industries is Sudeep Dadiga, who is the promoter a proprietary firm engaged in the of the firm, is an MBA and had earlier Smanufacture of BOPP (Biaxially worked as an investment banker in an Oriented Polypropylene (BOPP) films, MNC for 5 years. He quit the job to start Low Density polyethylene, laminated poly trading of non-woven bags to understand films for packaging FMCG products and the business. Later, with the support of his other goods. It fell into ab initio sickness family, he entered trading of non-woven due to certain internal issues of the bags and gained knowledge and experience. lending institution, the Andhra Pradesh Using his own funds, he set up the unit State Financial Corporation (APSFC), and obtained the loan from APSFC. It was Obviously these issues were extraneous to found that he approached APSFC because the enterprise. he was not much aware of finance available The firm had got a sanction for a loan from banks or other financial institutions. The large plant of Sri Datta Sai Shilpa Industries of `22 million in 2016 from APSFC, but it Examination of the documents revealed could not start commercial production due that the sanctioned loan amount was to by APSFC to some issues and by August 2019, the total be released in 18 months from the date u Provision of a margin loan of `2.4 loan disbursed stood at `15.5 million. The of sanction. However, it took more than million by TIHCL, which will be used moratorium period ended in May 2019, 3 years for the release part of the amount along with the funds released by APSFC but AFSFC stopped further disbursal of (`19 million). The promoter has not taken to get the machinery released the pending amount due to internal issues any other means of finance. u Immediate installation of machinery in the organization. The firm, however, It was also found that the promoter that the firm could already procure to completed the construction of the plant was depending on himself to market the start commercial production by October 2019. It incurred extra costs product and get orders, was planning to With this funding, the firm has now because of the delay in the release of funds register on marketing platforms, the goods completed civil construction of the 2400- by AFSFC, resulting in shortage of margin had good market in Telangana. yard manufacturing facility. There is a money to be contributed by the borrower quality check lab and all the machinery for getting disbursal of further funds, which TIHCL INTERVENTION and equipment have been installed. were earmarked for buying machineries The promoter approached TIHCL on the There are 5 employees. At present, it is This resulted in delay in starting commercial suggestion of one of the branch managers functioning at 50% of installed capacity production as the remaining machineries of APSFC. and it may require another 5 to 6 workers could not be procured. The examination of the sickness of the for operating at full capacity. The firm’s promoters approached unit by TIHCL team revealed the following: TIHCL at the instance of APSFC for u There was delay in disbursement of CONFIDENCE IN TIHCL resolving the issue and preliminary sanctioned amount TIHCL intervened in the matter and discussions with APSFC officials revealed u There was incomplete financial closure offered financial assistance as its evaluation that the problems and stress are real and by the primary lender found that the promoter is capable and he a solution was almost impossible. APSFC, u There was additional funds brought in had complete faith in TIHCL support now however, was ready for a resolution if by the promoter for completion of civil and in future. After TIHCL intervention, TIHCL proposed one. TIHCL, therefore, works due to partial release of funds The unit immediately acquired the entire intervened in the matter. by APSFC, which caused financial stress machinery and started trial run as well, on firm. which was pending since the last one year. BACKGROUND OF THE FIRM u There was delay in installation of TIHCL guided the promoter to register The manufacturing unit is located in machinery restricting the firm from with SIDBI that has a special scheme for the industrial area of Pashamylaram starting commercial production. financing SC/ST and women entrepreneurs village, Sanga Reddy district, and TIHCL evolved a resolution package with working capital. SIDBI would in all there is availability of experienced and comprising: probability consider the request positively trained personnel along with convenient u Release of the pending `2.7 million and because the case is sponsored by TIHCL. transportation and logistics. extension of the moratorium by one year [email protected]

38 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Communication Tool Mastercard to offerAlpha Banking platform to banks Alpha Banking platform is a tool developed by fintech company Goals101 and Mastercard has now an agreement with the company to offer it to

astercard will now offer the Alpha consumers who they want to target without Banking platform that ‘sanitizes, cannibalizing their existing user base. Minterprets and analyzes’ data to “For such targeted consumers, merchants gain actionable insights to Indian banks are willing to give their best offers, and under an agreement the company has that results in significant uptake of entered into with Alpha’s creators, the offers. As the platform drives relevant, fintech startup Goals101. The platform is contextual, automated, near real time intended to connect merchants and issuers offers communication to the end users, and makes effective use of ML and AI to and leverages all digital channels of the create hyper targeted and personalized bank, it brings in way more efficiency to all offers for cardholders. It is a plug and play marketing campaigns of the banks,” says he. tool, requiring no deep integration and can in quick time help automate and contextualize DECISION INTELLIGENCE a bank’s offers communication process with The platform apart, Mastercard is known its cardholders. as an early adopter of technologies like AI Aman Ahuja, Vice President, Product and ML and it has been making gainful Aman Ahuja Management, South Asia, Mastercard, use of big data and analytics. Ahuja says AI says the platform has capability to has become a crucial security capability for drive increased customer delight and SPECIFIC BENEFITS Mastercard to interpret the complexity scale engagement with hyper personalization He lists the specific benefits that Mastercard of data, spot anomalies and commonalities, and showcase positive impact on KPIs like customer banks can derive when they use and improve the shopping experience. spend, transaction, frequency, engagement the platform: “We have built several offerings in and latency. It will also help the banks to u Increased customer delight and this space. Decision Intelligence is a new reduce time to market for various products engagement with hyper personalization. breed of fraud tool with AI at its core. It and offers, he added. u Positive impact on KPIs like spend, enables us to identify fraud more effectively transaction, frequency, engagement and decrease false declines, which have ‘FOR YOU’ MODULE and latency. historically occurred through a lack of real- Mastercard, says Ahuja, has added a new u The platform drastically cuts down time time intelligence. With this tool, we have module to the platform, called ‘For You”, for required at every stage from acquisition seen a 3x increase in our ability to detect banks to enable end customers get one single to deployment allowing ability to run fraud, while the number of false declines has interactive communication page, where they more campaigns dropped 11-fold. We acquired Brighterion can see all relevant communication from Ahuja speaks about the ‘For You’ in 2017, with a focus on mission critical AI their bank making it a lot more engaging module that is specifically added after needs. Its technology is now at the core of the and a delightful experience for the end the new partnership: “The module ‘For Mastercard network and embedded within a customer. It is also adding more merchants You’ was conceptualized to solve a pain range of our security products,” says he. on the platform to ensure all key merchant point that banks currently grapple with Another innovative offer from the categories where consumers transact are of sending multiple communications to company is the mobile-first authentication covered on the platform. cardholders for offers and benefits and solution - Identity Check Express - which At least 10 top Indian banks are already hence not able to drive enough traction to is now instrumental in redefining the using the Alpha Banking platform and key notifications and meaningful offers. e-commerce journey for millions of Indian Ahuja says Mastercard and Goals 101 will This solution shall unify all partnerships, consumers by obviating the need for an now together ensure that the platform is product recommendations in one location OTP to authenticate consumers putting scaled up “with many more leading banks to and a cardholder shall be able to see through mobile transactions. drive contextual, automated, intelligent and one unified communication page that is “There is simply not a single part of the innovative offerings to their consumers.” customized basis their spend behavior. The business that will remain untouched by The platform ensures that banks can solution shall also have a built-in capability AI,” says Ahuja, “whether it is loyalty and go live instantly, get new revenue lines to track all relevant KPIs.” rewards schemes, or fraud prevention and and see campaign results in real time, He also underscores that the platform user experience of new channels.” adds Ahuja. enables merchants to reach out to specific [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 39 Cooperative NAFCUB switches to social media The apex body of UCBs has kept effective interaction with its member institutions during these critical times:

AFCUB, being the apex level SARFAESI ACT for UCBs, challenges before promotional body of urban urban cooperative banks, impact of covid and Ncooperative banks and credit role of UCBs, e-marketing for cooperative societies, always strives for the efficient banks, women empowerment and challenges functioning and strengthening of the before Mahila cooperative banks, governance sector. In order to ensure that its services for cooperative credit societies and the 4th All are available on a continuous basis during India Virtual Summit for Urban Cooperative the lockdown and to have necessary Banks,” says Mehta. safeguards against covid, its staff members were encouraged to work from home and E-NEWSLETTER increasingly use social media platforms for To update its members with the latest interacting with member institutions and developments in banking and financial address the issues raised by them during services sector, NAFCUB has started bringing these critical times. out its fortnightly newsletter electronically. Jyotindra Mehta, President, NAFCUB, Mehta says this is being sent to all its members says: “Social media proved to be very through email and this process not only saves efficient tool for achieving and promoting time but is also cost effective. our role and objectives. During covid times, for efficient and effective interaction Jyotindra Mehta describes INDIGENOUS NETWORKS with our member institutions, we made how NAFCUB kept in touch NAFCUB has been continuously striving to extensive use of social media, including with its stakeholders effectively choose the right network keeping in view Webex, WhatsApp, Facebook and Google. the government guidelines. “We would This proved cost effective for efficient using social media prefer safe, secure networks in the interest dissemination of all information related to of national security and data safety. Our working of NAFCUB during and post covid. 19 WEBINARS member institutions are using platforms such We conducted all our meetings through NAFCUB has organized 19 webinars on as WhatsApp, Webex, Facebook, LinkedIn Zoom and Webex platforms, which proved important issues/topics that were relevant and Twitter for communication, promotion not only very cost effective but also provided during the pandemic. “We have arranged the and educational purposes,” says Mehta. necessary shield against the possible spread webinars on cybercrimes and cybersecurity, NAFCUB being a promotional body, of infection.” recovery management and relevance of continuously strives to improve the services provided by it through modern means of communications and regularly interacts with various stakeholders like members, customers, regulators, management and employees. Says NAFCUB presence on Facebook Mehta: “Our urban cooperative credit sector is based on personalized services. Also, we ensure that there is complete transparency in our organization to further strengthen the urban cooperative credit sector. Through social media we are able to accomplish aims and objectives in an efficient manner. Our reach not only to our members has become very efficient but we are now equipped to deal with the whole world to showcase our achievements and goals. With more innovations, we look forward to more glorious future for our urban cooperative credit sector in years to come.” [email protected]

40 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Cooperative Gayatri Bank to adopt BCs, AePS, UPI, Video KYC Capex drives growth and modernization:

anamala Srinivas, CEO of the We have got the permission from Gayatri Cooperative Urban Bank, RBI to appoint banking correspondents/ Vhas taken the bank on the path of business facilitators. Pre-deployment digital transformation successfully. work is under process. We are planning to introduce the BC/BF services in the Mehul Dani: How have you upgraded first week of October 2020. technology infrastructure to handle customers and transactions growth in Who are your main technology vendors 2020-21? How many more ATMs have and what are their respective services? been added in the current FY? How large is your data center? Vanamala Srinivas: We have Our CBS is from BSG ITSoft. Our upgraded our CBS, mobile banking data center is at Tata Communication application and data center in Services. For FY 2019-20, our capex for accordance with the growth in volume of digital initiatives was `15.48 million and transactions. Also, we have replaced all opex `5.5 million. Capex and opex for the 44 ATMs instead of upgrading old FY 2020-21 for the same purposes are machines for being EMV compliant. In `18.57 million and `6.5 million. We have this way, the efficiency of the machines an IT team comprising 23 staff members, is increased and time for transaction is Vanamala Srinivas points out which has grown from 17 members last lot better now. It has enhanced customer that Gayatri Coop Urban Bank year. It is headed by a general manager, experience as well. Moreover, we have who has an assistant general manager added 6 additional machines to meet the replaced 44 old ATMs instead and 21 members. This team deals with customer flow at ATMs. of upgrading them to be EMV all operational and security issues and compliant coordinates with the service providers What are the usual topics training of for rectification of any technological the staff? Please give details of training security awareness, credit management, problems. programs undertaken in the current FY motivational sessions, digital payments so far. as well as dispute management and To what extent technology will be an In view of the covid situation, we customer service. We may add other enabler in the foreseeable future for are mainly focusing on online training topics as we move ahead. your bank? through digital media, which is more Technology will lead a major part efficient. We are covering a number of What is the variety, volume and value of the business in future. Due to covid topics in these sessions, such as cyber of digital payments? Any new payments pandemic, the entire business strategy products in the pipeline? has changed. The services and products As of 2019-20, IMPS transactions should be designed to avoid customer have increased to 632,612 with 56.13% visit to the bank. We are planning to yoy growth, amounting to `11.698 billion adopt BCs, AePS, UPI and video-based (up by17.18%). NACH transactions have KYC in the near future. increased to 1,486,397, with 97.98% yoy growth amounting to `7.944 billion (up How strong is your presence on social by 5.63%). There has been a 41.97 % yoy media? How are you acquiring new increase in debit card transactions to customers? 1,641,157, with the total amount being We are not present on any social media. `20.646 billion, up by 17.94%. We are going ‘Satisfied customers’ are our media. We to onboard UPI and AePS services soon. believe that mouth to mouth canvassing These are in the final stage of certification. is a big and strong promotion. At present, we have a base of 643,000 customers, and How have you brought BCs, distributors we are acquiring 300 new customers daily and agents, into the fold of your digital by this type of strategy only. strategy? [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 41 Cooperative Veraval Mercantile seeks new CBS The cooperative bank has a budget of `20 million:

ince banking is referred to as essential of technologies like augmented reality, service during the covid times, it blockchain, robotic process automation, Sis important for banks to continue quantum computing, artificial intelligence to offer their services with minimum and hybrid cloud, reveals Shah inconvenience to customers and employee. But managing the operations of banks ANALYTICS FOR CRM with much-reduced employee strength The bank has increased its business and the limitations imposed by curbs on by deploying analytics in many ways. various activities, including transportation For accelerating growth in an anemic is a challenge for banks. In spite of this, environment, says Shah, deeper and more the Veraval Mercantile Cooperative Bank detailed profile of customers in transactional has been able to manage day-to-day affairs and trading analytics can improve the with minimum interruptions. Admits Atul equitation and retention of customers as Shah, General Manager and CEO of the Atul Shah well as cross and up selling. “When banking bank: “Our strategy to manage employees, process is becoming faster and more facilitate payments, provide loans has been million and opex `3 million. Says Shah: effective, banks can provide faster and more facing problems. There is uncertainty “In the current financial year, we intend to accurate response to regulatory request and about enough cash flow for providing change our CBS system, so `20 million is give enhanced decision support leading to uninterrupted banking service to the people budgeted for this.” more productivity. Digital credit assessment, who have increased their dependency on early warning system, next generation the bank for their financing needs.” SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE testing and the credit collection analytics can The bank has therefore decided to The bank has a presence on the social media, help the banks to improve risk control. We enhance its technology infrastructure. especially for maintaining continuous can then reap new income from their data by contact with customers and informing them sharing customer analytics capability with TECH VENDORS & IT TEAM about the bank’s products. “We are live on new ecosystem partners such as telecom Saraswat Infotech is the main service pro- Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. We get companies or retailers. The banks can use vider for the bank, offering a number of IT feedback from out customers through these data and analytics to shape new business solutions. It has provided CBS, ATM and media and accordingly change or upgrade model and compete with fintechs,” he says. internet banking solutions, mobile bank- our products and solutions,” says Shah. One of the unique challenges in banking ing app, loan origination system, treasury, The bank’s website too contains all industry is meeting customer expectations analytics, AML, security systems, chat- necessary information about the bank and and effective CRM can help the banks to bots, information kiosks, HRM and audit its products. manage customers and better understand management solutions among others. Shah says the bank is arranging web their needs in order to provide the right Navi Mumbai based Cloud4C has been meetings for customers to educate them solution quickly. Shah says with the CRM the service provider for data backup and on financial transactions. It has also started technology, each department can access archival. There are also certain technol- marketing its products by interacting with the same information across all customer ogy solutions obtained from other vendors customers at time and dates convenient to profile, while also setting up individual like switches and routers jointly by Aster them and obtaining their feedback. “We also trigger for offering additional service. “To Network of Ahmedabad and Saraswat arrange web meetings with our customers enhance customer experience, we solve Infotech and SMS banking solution by to educate them on the care needed to be the customer problems quickly, without Baroda-based Aruhat Technologies along taken to tackle covid and explain to them compelling the customers to run from with Saraswat Infotech. about the advantages of using digital department to department,” he adds. The bank has a 4-meember IT team. The products. We also tell them about security He says by putting the customer at the bank ensures that this team gets adequate related issues so that they are well aware core of its business strategy, the bank’s top training and upskilling opportunities and of phishing and related crimes,” says Shah. priority this year is automating processes they are sent to institutes like CAB, Pune, and improving customer communication IDRBT, Hyderabad; RBI, Ahmedabad and TECH AS AN ENABLER by implementing new age digital solutions. GSC, Ahmedabad. In view of the pandemic The bank is permitted to offer mobile And for that bank is going to change its CBS now, they mostly attend webinars arranged banking services. Nearly 15% of its and finding out a new vendor to provide a by NAFCUB, RBI, IDRBT etc. transactions are made through digital new age technology. The bank has earmarked a capex of `10 channels. It is now readying to make use [email protected]

42 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Opinion Will it revive the economy? o alleviate the financial anxiety of the ability to pay, whether individuals or impoverished business entities and corporates, are taking advantage under this Tpersons affected by the lockdown to moratorium and deferring payment. He exterminate the lethal corona virus during said further extension will definitely hurt the last week of March 2020, the India’s the smaller NBFCs. central bank had offered a three-month Uday Kotak mentioned that sectors freeze or moratorium on repayment of all that are highly stressed due to the impact of term loans and advances. Although the covid are in dire need of such restructuring announcement of amnesty came only at and the restructuring of MSME accounts the end of August 2020, after weighing the will provide the necessary relief to the enduring monetary and economic crisis, the sector, which has experienced one of the Reserve Bank of India decided to permit most severe impacts resulting from the banks to restructure advances of fiscally conditions of lockdown, containment, strained organizations and assigned the task Shivanand Pandit reverse migration, supply chain and trade of solemnizing the structure of restructuring choking due to the pandemic. of loans to a professional committee. pulling on since March 2020. To conclude, novel rules prescribed by The committee has now come out with The covid pandemics caused trouble the RBI largely depend on the substantial the finer aspects of dealing with stressed to all - from governor to gardener and reinforcement of the economy. Instead of loans in 26 trade sectors. It has pointed president to servant. It brought on an demoralizing the prudent decisions of the out that approximately 72% of all banking astonishing apprehension to all. Therefore, banks, the RBI should allow the banks to sector debt has been adversely affected why only banks have to bear the heat? employ one-time loan restructuring scheme till now. However, around 42%, or `22.2 How does one guarantee that depositors’ to help harrowed borrowers. Banks should trillion, of the debts were under trauma interests are secured while banks sacrifice be given freedom to fabricate their own much earlier and 30%, or `15.50 trillion, a major part of their revenue? Due to the internal standards and strategies. This may of debts are on account of the pandemic. alarming rise in bad loans, banks have eradicate felonies and muted credit growth. Debtors or borrowers of the banks, who become partly lifeless and the waiver of With this, banks may regularize the recovery have been categorized as standard and with interest on loans under the moratorium in the economy through augmented lending. an amount outstanding below 30 days as at has gravely hurt depositors. If a big share of Shivanand Pandit is a tax specialist, financial 1 March 2020 are entitled for the scheme. the moratorium book goes bad, then banks’ advisor, guest faculty and public speaker The resolution agenda should be applied aptitude to pay depositors would enervate based in Goa. Email: [email protected] before 31 December 2020 and the strategy further. There will be cash flow mismatch has to be worked out within 180 days from for many banks too. Waiver of interest on Insurance Innovations the date of invocation. interest issue raised by the Supreme Court also certainly tweak banks and would wreck WRONG MEDICATION the credit behavior. When the confidence of depositors of banks is fading, when the regulator is not BANKERS’ OPINION able to restore the power-packed banking Rajnish Kumar, the former chairman of Seema Gaur system and when the flood of financial the country’s biggest moneylender State Executive Director - IT scams is present far and wide, the relief Bank of India, mentioned that a further Iffco Tokyo General Insurance Co offered to borrowers by the RBI by letting extensive postponement of the moratorium moneylenders to offer 180 days moratorium may not be necessitated. Shaktikanta Das, Summary: Several on loan settlement may prove ruinous to the governor of the RBI, has said that innovations are slowly the financial solidity of the banking edifice. newfangled actions to permit Indian lenders making their presence It will be an unjust treatment for banks and to rearrange loans will offer a durable felt in the insurance even depositors’ return on investment will resolution for cash-strapped businesses sector, like AI, be at peril. Similarly, the apex bank may and help revive the economy. In an online Machine Learning, Robotic Process land in a pickle. Additionally, the petition session organized by CII, Deepak Parekh, Automation and other intelligent technologies and insurers are using pursuing interest relinquishment on loan chairman of HDFC Bank, requested the the domain focused applications of moratorium has not yet been addressed by governor of the RBI not to prolong the these technologies. the Supreme Court of India and has been moratorium because even people who have

Banking Frontiers October 2020 43 Country Report - Open Banking UAE is readying to adopt open banking While a majority of banks in the UAE is keen to introduce open banking, Emirates NDB has already taken a plunge:

recent survey by Finstra has revealed minimum viable products (MVPs). The that 88% of financial services sandbox is a self-contained environment, A institutions in the UAE plan to providing fintechs and developers a introduce open banking in the next one year, simulated banking space to experiment clearly indicating these institutions have and create real-world apps and services. The weighed the pros and cons of the system platform consists of over 200 APIs and 900 and have understood that it will change the endpoints covering retail, corporate and way banks will handle information about small or mid-size business lines. Developers the customers and customers will ultimately also have access to over 5 million simulated The UAE’s Fintech Hive by in control of the information. They also transactions data related to 1 million acknowledge that the innovations in the customer accounts, based on the BIAN also helps foster collaboration across the financial services domain are being created (Banking Industry Architecture Network) banking group’s internal teams. on open platforms. using open APIs and model. This data has been restructured In the UAE in particular and in the open source software. to replicate Emirates NBD’s retail and Middle East in general, open banking Of the institutions surveyed, 57% corporate banking data and is fully concept is driven by the aim of becoming believed open banking will have the most compliant with open banking regulations more customer centric. This means engaging impact on corporate banking while 51% said and ISO20022 standards for electronic data the customers at a personal level and offering it will be retail banking and payments. Banks interchange between financial institutions. unique experiences for each individual among the institutions surveyed felt that It is expected that the sandbox will bring customer. The result is that banks and open banking will bring in better customer the latest and most competitive experiences financial services institutions that are able to service and experience capabilities would to market first. Emirates NBD is now able to collect more data and analyze this data and motivate banks to collaborate more with experiment and test the MVPs to offer new create unique experiences for the customers other financial institutions and developers. and diverse digital-native services, which win the race. A very high mobile penetration adds significant value to the ecosystem. also helps open banking to flourish. QUEST FOR INFORMATION The bank is now able to experiment with The UAE is poised to become a major predefined list of fintechs and has reduced FINTECH HIVE technology hub even as the country is the onboarding time of fintechs by 75%. The UAE has a unique collaboration undertaking a major effort in diversifying This means creative ideas are turned into between banks and fintech startups, called the economy through technology and real working prototypes faster, tested earlier, Fintech Hive, which is a financial technology innovation. The country has already and brought to market rapidly at a reduced accelerator in the region established by identified technology-based companies development cost. The platform also gives the Dubai International Financial Centre as key drivers of growth, supported by an developers access to diverse transaction (DIFC). Most of the banks, including foreign advanced technological infrastructure data to test various value propositions. banks, are participants in this effort that is and governmental support. The focus The platform that is created uses the mandated to ideate, collaborate and partner on technology is invariably making the Red Hat open banking solution, which with startups in a wide-ranging mentorship customers of financial services institutions combines Red Hat OpenShift Container and networking programs. As of end 2019, hungry for information - instant information Platform with data integration, API it has over 100 financial companies as to be precise - and they want to have better creation and management capabilities. members. At present 3 accelerator programs control over their money. They are also Red Hat provides unified data integration, are conducted by the center. aware of the experimentations conducted in handles real-time data feeds, and makes UAE banks, which have understood the Australia and Europe where open banking the bank’s APIs available across internal value and benefits of open banking and are has given better facilities for them. systems, partners and other third parties, in the process of working on the concept are while helping mitigate security risks and also vary of the vulnerabilities. For example, EMIRATE NBD’S SANDBOX protect sensitive data. cyberthreats. Exposing thousands of APIs One of UAE’s leading banks, the Emirates The bank’s shift to open banking has by opening banks up without rigorous NBD, had partnered with Virtusa to develop enabled it to externalize APIs that can then quality checks can lead to risks. Testing and a cloud-based, gamified open banking be used to offer new services like account verification of open APIs would also take a sandbox in November 2018 that enables updates via Amazon Alexa and WhatsApp much higher quantum of effort compared to developers and fintechs to ideate, build banking. Built on open source and with the development of these APIs. and publish API applications and create access to cloud-native services, the platform [email protected]

44 Banking Frontiers September 2020 Country Report - Blockchain Bahrain is country to watch for blockchain Bahrain, the smallest of the Gulf kingdoms, is poised to become a leader in the use of blockchain technology:

ahrain, though the smallest of the FinTech Bay, which is the largest fintech countries in the Middle East, is hub in the Middle East and African region. Btoday taking the lead in blockchain- Today, it has more than 50 partners from related projects, especially crypto assets. It local and international organizations. It is on the verge of enacting regulations for provides a dedicated fintech co-working cryptocurrency and becoming a pioneer space, with innovation labs, acceleration in blockchain in the region. The country programs, curated activities and has some 116 licensed banks, 151 insurance educational opportunities. companies and a number of investment The applications of blockchain in institutions that together account for one- Bahrain are not just confined to some key fourth of its GDP. frontline industries. Petroleum industry Bahrain’s Economic Development is one among those using blockchain Bahrain Fintech Bay Board had endorsed blockchain in 2017, and cryptocurrency-based systems as the giving formal approval for 28 blockchain country strives to offset the slump in crude of shipping data, enabling more efficient enterprises and also continuing to expand oil prices and reliance on petroleum exports. global trade. the fintech capital flows from other GCC As Bahrain has started adopting countries, as well as from China, India FINAL RULES BY CENTRAL BANK open banking regulations in June 2019, and the UK. The Central Bank of Bahrain The Central Bank of Bahrain has issued becoming one of the first countries to had also formulated rules regarding the final rules on a range of activities mandate open banking, blockchain licensing, governance and cybersecurity. relevant to crypto-assets. These rules technology will have a major role in - covering crypto-assets operating interconnecting banking services REGULATORY SANDBOX under blockchain/ distributed ledger and provide value-added services Besides, there has also been a regulatory systems are aimed at ensuring that the for customers. sandbox to help boost fintech and related activities are brought within the blockchain-related businesses. The regulatory perimeter and are subject CRYPTO-FRIENDLY regulatory sandbox functions under the to comprehensive regulatory and Bahrain is a known crypto-friendly fintech and innovation unit of the Central supervisory measures. These rules deal country. Nearly half of the companies Bank of Bahrain. There are some 35 with licensing, governance, minimum approved for the regulatory sandbox are firms in the sandbox and 2 have already capital, control environment, risk either crypto exchanges or other crypto graduated to ‘full license’ status. UK management, AML/CFT, standards of businesses including ATMs. The kingdom company Fasset, a provider of blockchain- business conduct, avoidance of conflicts has been trying to attract businesses to powered platforms, has been mandated of interest, reporting, and cyber security its crypto-friendly environment. The to test its solutions for the tokenisation for crypto-asset services. They also cover Bahrain Economic Development Board of hard assets in the regulatory sandbox. supervision and enforcement standards had invited Indian firms to take advantage The authorization is the first of its kind including those provided by a platform of the opportunities in the country. in the world. operator as a principal, agent, portfolio The central bank has come out In addition, the University of Bahrain manager, adviser and as a custodian with a consultation paper on directives has recently introduced blockchain-based within or from the Kingdom of Bahrain. for services provided by crypto-asset digital diplomas to students, becoming Bahrain’s Arab Banking Corporation, platform operators, which provides for a one of the first universities globally to or ABC, was the first to join the R3 regulatory framework for licensing and have digital diplomas. Another effort is distributed ledger consortium in the supervision of crypto-asset services to fall KYC based on blockchain introduced MENA region way back in 2017. The under CBB Rulebook. by the country’s Electronic Network bank also operates in Algeria, Egypt, For those licensed by the central bank for Financial Transactions (BENEFIT). Tunisia and Jordan. as crypto-asset exchanges, the regulatory Financial institutions that subscribe to Bahrain is the first fully integrated framework also contains rules relevant BENEFIT are able to instantly complete port in the region within the IBM’s to order matching, pre and post trade KYC and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) TradeLens platform, a blockchain- transparency, measures to avoid market compliance procedures. based digital platform that empowers manipulation and market abuse, and The most noteworthy blockchain- businesses and authorities along the conflicts of interest. related effort in the kingdom is the supply chain with a single, secure source [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 45 Conference Report Insurtech - the way forward Technology experts from the insurance industry discuss association and collaboration with insurtech companies at Technoviti 2020:

Pankaj Pandey, Head – IT, SBI General Insurance Insurtech is nothing but an aggregation of the technology in the insurance business. Right from the initial days of the industry, technology has been used for increasing operational efficiency and reaching out to the masses. LIC was the early adopter of technology. We need to reach out to the masses and their minds using technology to persuade them to buy insurance. Even after the privatization of the insurance sector, insurance penetration is still low in India - just 5% for life insurance and 1% for general insurance. Insurance is not a Panelists exchanging notes normal business; it has a social obligation. Physically reaching to the rural areas get z amount. If we complicate the products dependent on brick and mortar structure is a difficult job. We have to take care that and use jargon, people will get scared to buy and they are relying heavily on the digital. insurance is be sold to the rural masses as the insurance. The ideas are coming from the ecosystem per their needs, and not as per the needs There is lot of data available, it is for us and are driven by the insurtech and fintech of the insurance companies. There are so insurance companies on how to use it. There companies. many things happening in microinsurance may be need for tie-up is with different We are seeing a lot of campaigns from and the companies need to focus on industries and government bodies for this. the life insurance companies like ‘sabse pehle how easily a rural person can purchase For example, if the data with the insurance life insurance’, and if we are not able to take insurance, pay the premium regularly and companies is co-related with the data that full leverage of the supporters and enablers, avail the services without hassles and finally is there in regional transport authorities, then we probably have missed the bus. ensure that the claims are settled easily. In then the number of vehicles without Instead of opening branches in tier all these areas, technology can play a major insurance can be brought out this can be 3-4 centers, there should be a focus on role. For this, insurance and insurtech an opportunity for insurance companies to digitization. People in rural India have companies must join hands and find ways sell vehicle insurance policies. Useful data mobile phones, the daily internet surfing to create use cases that gainfully provide is there in abundance – for example social and number of downloads that happen in insurance to the people who require it. media, branded stores, etc. rural India are more than what happens The greatest hurdle in microinsurance A certain level of data exchange is already in urban India. Instead of insurance is the cost to sell the policy and to service happening in the insurance industry. We are companies pushing their products, they the policyholder. These expenses impact already using data available with credit rating should try and be providing some of the the premium and if the premium becomes agencies for risk management. However, for products that the people in rural India are high, then it is not beneficial to the insured some types of data, laws are very stringent wanting for themselves. person. We must examine how insurance that even within a group company, we may Can we replace life insurance as a one or can be sold and serviced at the minimum not be able to exchange data. two-click option? We need to declutter the expense. Selling insurance with a loan entire life insurance selling process. People product is one option, but it should be Alpesh Karnik, Vice President - generally think life insurance is 10-12 major voluntary and not by force. Digitalization & Salesforce Automation at application forms and policy issuance It is necessary that insurance products ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co takes about 10 to 15 days. But times are are designed in a simple manner and the Lot of changes are happening in the changing, all the insurance companies now person wanting to buy an insurance policy life insurance industry and digital is have abilities to come up with a digital should clearly know that if he pays x amount playing a more prominent role in terms of policy within a day. Instead of doing hard as premium, he will get y amount as cover reaching out to the customers and servicing selling, we need to involve with what the and if he survives the policy period, he will them. Life insurance companies are not person wants and try to link through the

46 Banking Frontiers October 2020 APIs and be a part of the ecosystem where the customer approaches the insurance company rather than we push our products. It is all about joining or collaborating with the big businesses or with big banks which already have a captive customer base, instead of going alone. Insurance products should be simple and easy to understand and for the A view of the attentive audience distributor to propose. For example, customers can purchase a term product on be allowed and we may do pilots on these. property ownership, whether the title is clear our website and the same product we can The whole thins boils down to the fact you or not, etc. The same analogy I can take for offer in a small sachet on Paytm or ICICI cannot increase your expenses, but still try crop insurance, whether the land belongs to Bank app. Somebody may come to our site and give a much better offering for your the insured person or nor and the kind of and fills up the entire application form and customers and distributors. The distributor crops he is growing and the income he derives probably buy a `3 crore cover. But when the gets the product which is easy to sell and he and the impact of seasons on the crop. These same customer goes to our partner portal or gets his share in the pie. factors actually determine a farmer’s earning app and buys the cover, we do not increase Insurance companies want lots of data. capability as well as the overall ankle and the the cover, but we keep the process simple – It should not be plain data, signed and risk attached to it. Both banks and insurance the whole process can be completed in just certified by either a government agency companies have been leveraging similar data 1 or 2 clicks. And the customer also gets or banks. Insurtech helps to provide the sets to arrive at decisions. the payment from the partner ecosystem. meaningful insights of this data. Insurtech Insurance looks at a macro angle, We are trying to bring innovations in our develops expertise and gives you curated whereas banking has been a blend of both. existing products, as per the requirements data whereby organizations can embed it The ticket size of the loan has been dropping of our partner customers. into some of the algorithms, and it helps tremendously, personal loans of `500,000 Every life insurance company has a faster decision making without taking to `1 million have now reduced to `50,000 term, savings, annuity, and unit product. excessive risks. We would be looking for to `100,000. There are also per day loans of Instead of pitching these products to the collaboration rather than just signing up up to `1000-1500. These are helping banks customers, there is another solution. For and looking at the data. to gain substantial interests, especially in example, in the case of a person living for tier 2-3 centers and rural areas. the next 20 years, he will get an x amount Omkar Shirhatti, Co-Founder and CEO at It requires a lot of discussions and and after that half of it is paid to him every Karza Technologies brain storming sessions to understand how year in annuities. In case some unfortunate I do not really see a major difference technologies can be employed to make things happen, the customer’s family gets between how an insurance company operates the whole operations easier. Today, data a one-time bulk amount. We have created or a bank or NBFC operates. There are 3 can be leveraged in a completely different a solution that is a blend of term product, components predominantly for an NBFC and perspective when it comes to an insurance savings and annuity product, at the backend a bank - acquisition of customers, identifying company. The proposed sandbox is a great we have 3 products with us, but for the end the right set of customers and onboarding idea where fintechs will be working with customer there is one solution and that has them after checking their eligibility etc. banks and financial companies. Similarly, been enabled through the digital medium. Digital signing initiatives, instant KYC insurance companies too can get to know The regulator has been kind enough to verification, Aadhaar, Digi locker, etc are about new solutions that can be built so that come up with the sandbox guidelines. So easing the overall process of onboarding and their problems can be solved. May be we far, we were in a protective environment capturing the customer data. will be able to leverage the same data sets or and the regulator has allowed us to come Underwriting is crucial for insurance same intelligence that we have been using up with innovative ideas and try and companies. For issuing a life insurance now for a completely different purpose. test those ideas for a period of 6 months. policy, the insurance company needs to The UPI gateway connects banks for We can extend it up to 1 year. There are be aware of the earning capability of the transferring money. Similarly, account multiple options or ideas we have floated person, whether salaried or self-employed, aggregation will be possible through transfer on the product innovation and customer etc, the source of income and whether he of data between financial institutions at a onboarding side. There are some ideas or she will be able to service the premium click of a button. So, the level of innovation and projects for working along with some or not. This is something that is inherent in will revolutionize how data is exchanged and fintech and insurtech companies and we the insurance underwriting. It would be the shared between organizations with the proper have taken these up with the regulator and same for the lending business. consent of the customers’ external side. we are hopeful that one or two of these will Form a mortgage perspective, I look for [email protected]

Banking Frontiers October 2020 47 Research Notes - Online Security When celebrities become most dangerous to search online 9 Indian film and TV celebriities are most dangerous to be searched online: nternet securities firm McAfee has Krishnapur said ass consumers scout the with his soulful voice is Arijit Singh, the come out with an India list of ‘most web for free entertainment now more than voice behind major Bollywood hit songs, Idangerous celebrities to search online’, ever, cybercriminals trail close behind, along with singer, performer, and popular and interestingly Portuguese football capitalizing on this interest. “Unsuspecting youth icon, Armaan Malik. Second to the player Cristiano Ronaldo figures at the top users often look for free and pirated content movies, the TV industry also attracts a huge of the list. McAfee compiled the list based such as major sports events, movies, TV following, with actress and household name on research done on the famous names shows, along with images and leaked Divyanka Tripathi also making it to the list,” that generate the riskiest search results videos of their favourite celebs. Bad actors it explained further. that could potentially trigger consumers leverage consumers’ fascination with pop to unknowingly install malware on their culture and drive unsuspecting fans to HOW CAN ONE BE SAFE? devices. Apart from Ronaldo, the other 9 malicious websites that install malware on McAfee advises online users to be vigilant that figures in the list are all Indians. their devices, potentially putting personal in practicing safe online behaviour and McAfee said Ronaldo found himself information at risk,” he added, stating provided tips: as the No 10 most dangerous celebrity in further: “When consumers compromise u Be careful what you click. Users looking 2019. “Owing to his transfer to Juventus on security in favour of convenience and for the latest releases, as well as updates from Real Madrid for a reported £105 freebies, they put their digital lives at risk. on their favourite celebrities, should million making headlines world over, he It is vital that fans stay vigilant, avoid be cautious and only click on links to has reached the No 1 spot in 2020. With all suspicious links that promise free content reliable sources. The safest thing to do is eyes on him at the UEFA Champions league and think twice before clicking.” to wait for official releases and leverage this year, he has been capturing attention legitimate TV and movie streaming from football enthusiasts worldwide. LOOKING FOR ENTERTAINMENT platforms, instead of visiting third-party Ronaldo’s popularity has soared not only for McAfee cites the reason for the Indian websites that could contain malware. his football skills but also for his lifestyle, personalities becoming ‘most dangerous u Refrain from illegal streaming and brand endorsements, earnings, and social celebrities to search online’, as Indians downloading suspicious mp3s. Whether media clout. McAfee’s research shows this becoming particularly active online consumers prefer catching a re-run of highly searched-for soccer star is in fact following the covid related lockdown, thereby Andhadhun or listening to Arijit’s divine the most dangerous celebrity to search for increasing their usage across many devices voice, it is important to only use legitimate in 2020, as his name generates the most and scouring the internet for a wide variety music and movie streaming platforms, harmful links online,” is explained. of entertainment. “Hackers too, honed-in on even if they come at a cost. Many illegal this trend, following consumer behaviour to downloads are riddled with malware or BOLLYWOOD TOPPERS execute their scam strategies,” it added adware disguised as mp3 files. The No 2 most dangerous celebrity is McAfee also said with work, office and u Protect your online safety with a veteran Indian actress Tabu, gaining education converging at home, India’s cybersecurity solution. Safeguard recent popularity for her roles in critically young population now spend a majority of yourself from cybercriminals with a acclaimed movies like Andhadhun and A their time online. “Their inherent obsession comprehensive security solution like Suitable Boy. Then comes Taapsee Pannu at with Bollywood and sports drive them to McAfee Total Protection. This can help No 3, Bollywood stars Anushka Sharma at search for related free content. Ranging protect you from malware, phishing No 4 and Sonakshi Sinha at No 5. The others from acclaimed actor Tabu, to the bubbly attacks, and other threats. in the list are Indian singer Armaan Malik Sara Ali Khan, along with King Khan, their u Use parental control software. Kids are at No 6, Sara Ali Khan at No. 7, popular TV popular movies this year have kept fans fans of celebrities too, so ensure that soap actress Divyanka Tripathi at No 8, the constantly on the lookout. Movies with limits are set for your child on their King of Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan at No strong female leads have been the crowd devices and use parental control software 9 and playback singer Arijit Singh at No 10. favourite this year, earning actresses like to help minimise exposure to potentially McAfee India’s Managing Director Taapsee, Anushka and Sonakshi a place malicious or inappropriate websites. and Vice President - Engineering Venkat on the list. Striking all the right notes [email protected]

Cristiano Ronaldo Tabu Tapse Pannu Anushka Sharma Sonakshi Sinha Armaan Malik Sara Ali Khan Divyanka Tripathi Shah Rukh Khan Arijit Singh

48 Banking Frontiers October 2020 Research Notes - Cloud Adoption The State of Cloud Native Security Adopting cloud is not just a cumbersome journey but there are challenges that enterprises encounter:

study covering some 3000 to help enterprises make decisions about adoption’, ‘The Number 1 Threat to Cloud professionals in cloud architecture, their own cloud transformation or cloud Security’, ‘Greatest Challenge to providing Ainformation security, DevOps use in order to realize the full potential Comprehensive Cloud Security’ and ‘Top and application development located in 5 of cloud. The report covers 3 aspects of Organizational Priorities for Securing countries carried out by Palo Alto Networks cloud: The State of the Cloud and Cloud Cloud Native Applications’. Here is a and Accenture, titled the ‘State of Cloud Native Adoption, The State of Securing the graphical depiction of some of the critical Native Security’, outlines the practices, tools Cloud and Cloud Native Workloads and challenges that the study found enterprises and technologies that companies around Measuring Security Preparedness. face while evolving an effective cloud the world use to manage security for cloud The report among other things adoption strategy. native architecture. The report is intended discusses specifically ‘Challenges to cloud [email protected]

Greatest Challenge to Providing Comprehensive Cloud Security No 1 Threat to Cloud Security Others Overprovisioned access Executiuve buy-in Application misconfigurations Infrastructure misconfigurations Automation Insure APIs Security reporting tools Credential leakage Securing budget Insider threats Integration of security tools Weak and broken authentication Evaluating current stater Application Vulnerabilities Safe prctice training Malware Tool training Data Exposure Lack of visibility 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10%12% 14% 0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10%12% 14%16%

Top Organizational Priorities for Securing Cloud Native Applications Challenges in Moving to the Cloud

42% Incident response management Technical complexity

Network microsegmentation Maintaining comprehensive security 39% IAM governance Compliance 32% Machine identity Asset inventory Lack of talent 28%

Userbehavior analytics Legacy change management processes 27% Compliance and governance Lack of budget 24% Runtime security Vulnerability management No clear cloud migration strategy 23% Network anomaly detection Cultural alignment 23% Application security Lack of executive buy-in 20% Data protection

0% 2% 4% 6% 8% 10%12% 14%16% No clearly established ROI 19%

Banking Frontiers October 2020 49 Research Notes Working in banking is getting transformed An interesting research study on how covid pandemic has impacted the way staff in banking and financial services companies work:

igital Banking Report, a publication pandemic. A major highlight of the research value and improve job satisfaction. offering in-depth insight into study was the fact that the adaptability of The report suggests that the covid crisis Dhow data, digital technologies, the workforce to remote work created new has evolved, the banking industry needed to innovation and new competition are opportunities for knowledge-sharing rethink strategies around how to get work changing the banking industry amd across departments and functions. It also done and how to serve consumers. After OpenText, the Canadian corporation that revealed talent gaps, where existing roles years of a slow but steady digital banking develops and sells enterprise information may be threatened and new training will transformation, the pandemic catapulted management software have together be required. One another key finding the industry into the future of work almost brought out a whitepaper titled ‘Banking was that technology will most likely not instantaneously. Transformed’, discussing the future of replace humans, but will augment their We bring 4 key insights in the study. working in banking in the aftermath of the ability to reduce costs, create customer [email protected]

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION/CUSTOMER CX FIS WILL ADDRESS SKILLS GAP FROM INTERNAL IMPACTED MOST BY SKILLS GAP AND EXTERNAL SOURCES Q: What are the biggest risks to not upskilling or reskilling? Q: Which of these are the most important to close a potential skills gap in your organization? (Pick 3) 58% 53% Internal training/reskilling 47% 44% 36% Hiring from competitors 42%

22% Partnering with solution provider 38% 14% Use of part-time or contingent worker 36% 4% Hiring from outside my industry 34% l

Providing financial support for personal opportunity growth initiatives 24% Increased costs Missed business Decreased mora negatively impacted Building pipeline from digital transforCustomer mation experienceMissed growth targets education organization 14% Lack of innovation and/or Unproductive employees Source: Digital Banking Report Research © June 2020 Digital Banking Report Source: Digital Banking Report Research © June 2020 Digital Banking Report

RESKILLING CURRENT EMPLOYEES WILL POSITIVELY SEVERAL CHALLENGES WILL IMPACT IMPACT SKILLS GAP, INNOVATION AND DIGITAL RESKILLING CURRENT STAFF IN BANKING TRANSFORMATION Q: What are the challenges to upskilling or retraining current personnel? Q: How eective is the upskilling and reskilling process to achieving the following objectives? Reducing skills gap/needs Ability of current employees to learn new skills 53% 43% 32% 21% 4% Funding for training Greater innovation and digital transformation and reskilling 48% 39% 32% 27% 2% Motivation and incenting to learn 36% Business growth Retaining trained 28% 42% 22% 8% employees 32% Improved corporate culture Senior management support 26% 26% 35% 22% 17% Measurement Reducing costs (productivity) of results 26% 24% 28% 36% 12% Understanding skills needed 23% Acquiring and retaining new employees Disruption of 17% 47% 32% 4% normal operations 12% ■ Significantly effective ■ Moderately effective ■ Minimally effective ■ Not effective Source: Digital Banking Report Research © June 2020 Digital Banking Report Source: Digital Banking Report Research © June 2020 Digital Banking Report

50 Banking Frontiers October 2020 People Track M. Rajeshwar Rao is Deputy Governor, RBI RBI appoints 3 new M. Rajeshwar Rao, senior-most executive director at the members to MPC The government has named Shashanka Reserve Bank of India, has been appointed deputy governor of Bhide, Ashima Goyal and Jayanth Varma the central bank. The government made the announcement as its nominees on the Reserve Bank of stating he will take the place of N.S. Vishwanathan, who has India’s monetary policy committee (MPC). stepped down 3 months ahead of his extended tenure on They will fill the positions vacated by health grounds. Rao became ED of RBI in November 2016. previous members in September. The He is currently looking after Internal Debt Management MPC comprises 3 government nominees Department, International Department and Financial and 3 senior members of staff of the RBI. Markets Operation Department. RBI has to have 4 deputy The new members have been appointed governors, at least 2 from within the bank, 1 commercial for a 4-year term. Ashima Goyal is a banker and one an economist to head the monetary policy member of Prime Minister Narendra department. The other 3 deputy governors now are B.P. Modi’s economic advisory council. She is Kanungo, M.K. Jain and Michael Debabrata Patra. Rao is a professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute an economics graduate and an MBA. He had joined RBI in 1984. of Development Research in Mumbai and was a visiting fellow at Yale University. Shashanka Bhide is a senior advisor at S. Krishnan is MD & CEO at P&SB the National Council for Applied Economic Punjab & Sind Bank has a new Managing Director and CEO. The Research. Jayanth Varma is a finance government has appointed S. Krishnan to the position, who was and accounting professor at the Indian previously Executive Director of Syndicate Bank from November Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. 2017 to March 2020 and Executive Director of Canara Bank from April 2020 to 3 September 2020. He began his career in Indian Puneet Kohli is CTO at Bank in 1983. He is a specialist on credit, specifically corporate Universal Sompo credit and risk management. A post graduate in commerce, he is a Puneet Kaur Kohli has qualified cost accountant and a CAIIB. been appointed as Chief Technology Officer of Bandhan Bank has a new President and CMDO Universal Sompo General Insurance Company. She Bandhan Bank has appointed Rahul Parikh as Executive President and brings over 23 years of Chief Marketing & Digital Officer. He will be responsible for the digital Puneet Kaur extensive experience in banking business P&L and for building a strong digital backbone to Kohli Information Technology support the bank. He will lead the marketing function of the bank, working with several organizations, Prior which focusses on furthering brand equity by improving brand salience, to joining Universal Sompo, Dr Kohli had customer experience, customer engagement and product marketing. worked with Manappuram Finance as Parikh has 2 decades of experience, including strategic positions in Group Chief Information and Technology financial services firms. Before his engagement by Bandhan Bank, he Officer. In her career of 24 years, she has has been with Roots Ventures, where he was a Partner and responsible also worked in various leadership roles and for driving AMC strategy, fund raising, supporting deal-making and was associated with Bajaj Cap, Motricity and investee company operations. He has also held the position of CEO at Bajaj Capital, where Bharti Airtel. She is a PhD, MBA and B.Tech. he transformed the organization by building strong capabilities in areas of digital, marketing, technology, research and advisory and risk management. He has also worked with Aditya New CISO at PayU Birla Financial Services. In Bandhan Bank, he will report to Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, PayU has appointed Prakash Padariya Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the bank. Bandhan Bank has also created as the company’s Chief Information a broader vertical called ‘emerging entrepreneurs’ business’ which includes its microbanking Security Officer. He will lead and further division, micro home loan and micro enterprise loans and engaged Kumar Asish, who was strengthen PayU India security team, Group Director, Airtel Money in Africa, to head the unit. while ensuring alignment with PayU’s global security strategic initiatives and Venkatramu to head India Post Payments Bank standards. He will be responsible for The government has appointed J. Venkatramu as the Managing Director and CEO of embedding best-in-class security within India Post Payments Bank for 3 years. Venkatramu has over 22 years of work experience PayU’s product and technology services, across banking services such as payments, mobile banking, retail banking products and overseeing all PayU locations in India. has also managed digital financial services projects. He is currently chief digital officer at He has more than 17 years of experience Equitas Small Finance Bank. He will take over the post vacated by Suresh Sethi who had in core information, cybersecurity and technology. He was previously the CISO served as founder MD and CEO of the payments banks till March. India Post Payments at GE India Technology Center. Bank is a state-owned entity, under the department of posts, with 100% government equity and is governed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Banking Frontiers October 2020 51 RNI REG. NO. MAHENG/2002/9930 POSTAL REG. NO. MCN/70/2019-2021 POSTED AT MUMBAI PATRIKA CHANNEL SORTING OFFICE, GPO, MUMBAI ON 16-17 OF EVERY MONTH PUBLISHING DATE 16th OF EVERY MONTH