With the rise of digitisation, the responsibility is to safeguard the banking services against the cyber criminals on the prowl. This makes the need for security imperative, says Rajnish Khare, Head, Digital Transformation, Social Business & New Media and Mobility Banking, HDFC Bank Pvt. Ltd., in conversation with Rashi Aditi Ghosh of Elets News Network (ENN).
In an industry first initiative, the HDFC Bank Limited has launched three-minute digital loan securities, allowing the customers to avail loans swiftly. Tell us about this new initiative.
The HDFC Bank on 15 March launched digital Loan Against Securities (LAS), allowing customers to avail loans in less than three minutes. This is an industry first initiative by the bank.
The service will also be available to the customers with no credit history. The bank, which will offer 10.5 per cent interest rate on the product, will soon expand the offering to other securities such as mutual funds, bonds and insurance policies.
Customers can avail a minimum loan of Rs 1 lakh and maximum loan up to Rs 20 lakh under this facility. Banks normally disburse 50 per cent of the value of pledged shares as loan. The bank has collaborated with National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) to seamlessly deliver this product.
HDFC Bank is the first bank in India to completely automate the entire process of creating an overdraft facility in a separate current account for loan against shares. The bank has collaborated with NSDL to create a seamless customer experience. HDFC Bank Demat Customers can calculate their eligibility for overdraft limit against shares, and open a current account instantly. The entire process can now be completed within three minutes instead of days.
Currently available for demat shares only, this facility will soon be extended to other securities such as mutual funds, bonds, and insurance policies. Digital LAS empowers the customers to design their own loan against shares at their convenience and avail the facility within minutes. Customers, with shares in their portfolio, can leverage it when there is an urgent need for money. For example, a medical emergency.
HDFC Bank recently launched artificial-intelligence virtual assistant EVA to answer customer queries, kindly apprise us about this project and its significance.
EVA is India’s first AI-based banking chatbot and can answer millions of customer queries across multiple channels instantly.
This technology can assimilate knowledge from thousands of sources and provide answers in simple language in less than 0.4 seconds.
Within the first few days of its launch, EVA has answered over one lakh queries from thousands of customers from 17 countries across the globe.
With the launch of EVA, bank customers can get information on its products and services instantaneously and it also becomes smarter as it learns through its customer interactions.
Going forward, EVA would be able to handle real banking transactions as well, which would enable HDFC Bank to offer the true power of conversational banking to its customers.
Your bank has also launched digital banking services for small and medium enterprises (SME) clients, how innovatory is this project?
HDFC Bank has launched digital banking services for its small and medium enterprises (SME) clientele in March, last year. It will allow clients to access the complete range of services instantly and 24X7 through their desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile.
HDFC Bank provides banking services to about 100,000 SMEs, out of a total universe of 3,60, 00,000 SMEs across India. HDFC Bank’s total SME record stood at Rs 70,000 crore, as of March 2016, constituting 18 per cent of the total order book.
With the launch of the SM@, SMEs will be able to get swifter approval of loans, letter of credit, bank guarantees once the necessary documentation has been provided for.
Bank believes that up to 60 per cent of SME transactions will go online by the end of 2016. He declined to provide the average size of SME-related transactions done through the bank.
The digital facility will do away with the need to call on a relationship manager or visit a branch, to transact or to get clearances. For each client initiated transaction request, a Quick Response (QR) code will be sent.
Clients can ask for seasonal/additional limits for a sudden business requirement. This would be processed, based on HDFC Bank’s analytics data.
Several banks in India have been focussing on providing lending and banking facilities to SMEs, which are seen as amongst the fast growing segments of the economy.
But for millions of small businesses in India, seeking credit has always been a challenge. Several startups have started to fill up this gap by providing working capital requirements to these units.
With digitisation, the risk of malware infestation within e-payments is also rising, how is your organisation controlling the menace?
Unarguably, with the digitisation drive comes the responsibility to safeguard against cyber pickpockets (cyber criminals) who will be on the prowl against unsuspecting consumers. Considering that cashless payments will become both a necessity and a huge convenience, it is imperative that security becomes embedded by design rather than a bolt add-on.
We adhere to “The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)” and ISO 27001 (international standard that describes best practice for an information security management system (ISMS)
We put the best security practices in place while investing efforts in educating people, as they are gradually picking up pace on their cashless journey
Our bank ensures that the user credentials are tokenised, cryptographic and authenticated before the transaction takes place. We avoid storing customer-sensitive data in cloud and ensure that servers are well protected with standardised firewall and server security.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of HDFC Bank Pvt Ltd.
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