India has a lot of potential in terms of digital banking says Rajagopal Devara, Principal Secretary (Reforms), Finance Department, Government of Maharashtra, at the recently concluded 3rd Elets BFSI Leadership Summit in Mumbai.
The summit was organised by Elets Technomedia and supported by Finance Department, Government of Maharashtra.
Welcoming all the attendees at the conclave, Devara said that Government of Maharashtra is happy to be associated with Elets Technomedia in this endeavour.
“This initiative was taken to assemble stakeholders from across financial institutions in India for analysing various hurdles pertaining to banking the underbanked and take the recommendations suggested by the experts to the Government of Maharashtra. This will help us in rolling out the policies better and serving the common people efficiently,” he added.
“Digital payments across India are setting new milestones but it is still very low as compared to the transactions performed by the people in foreign countries. Centre’s initiatives in terms of digitisation are commendable and we all are trying our level best to make Digital India a reality,” he said.
The summit commenced with the inaugural session that focused on the role of phygital banking in today’s era.
Explaining the role of Aadhaar and its contribution towards Phygital banking, Dr Sanjay Chahande, Deputy Director General, UIDAI, Government of India said, “Aadhaar is not just an identification number; it is also an important way to extend welfare benefits to the populace and enabling financial inclusion. Aadhaar ensures a unique alignment between physical and digital banking by reaching out to the last mile”
At the conference, he shared several video case studies explaining the role of Aadhaar in enabling phygital banking.
Asserting further on the role of Aadhaar and Financial Inclusion, Ashish Chauhan, MD & CEO, Bombay Stock Exchange said, “The fundamental question that should come to my mind is – Why do we need Financial Inclusion in India? Financial Inclusion is not just important but it is the base of banking services. In the recent past, we have made significant accomplishments pertaining to this and Aadhaar is a major source contributing to this cause.”
Sharing an interesting trend pertaining to India’s mobile phone density, K Ramachandran, Senior Advisor-Banking Technology, Indian Banks’ Association said, “There are a lot of mobile phones users in India but most of them are feature phone users, not the smartphone ones. This shows the need to build strategies in terms of Phygital Banking.”
The Central government has taken a lot of initiatives in a bid to boost the usage of digital payments in the country. Public sector lenders are contributing a lot towards this by banking the several underbanked segments of India.
Arijit Basu, Managing Director-Commercial Clients Group & IT, State Bank of India (SBI) said, “Today, 87 percent of the banking is performed under SBI are outside the branch. Out of this, 30 percent of the transactions happen at the ATMs, the remaining 57 percent is undertaken online. For our regular online platform, we now have over five crore customers. There have been a lot of innovations that are undertaken over the years. The scenario was completely different two to three years ago and the figure merely stood at 40 percent.”
Phygital banking not just emphasises on embracing new technologies but it also focuses on the ongoing requirement of the customers.
“Meeting the customers’ demand is way pivotal than upgrading to a new age technology,” said Satish Pillai, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Transunion CIBIL.
He also said that over the years India has grown in terms of banking the underbanked.
“Today credit industry receives about one million credit applications per day and average approval time on consumption loans is one working day,” he said.
Presenting the role of C-Suite in enabling digital banking, Sabyasachi Goswami, Senior Vice President, Head Sales & Strategy, Perfios said, “It is important for every financial institution to adopt transparency at the first place prior to embracing digitisation. Secondly, there has to be a culture and mindset within the organisation that has to be driven by Chief Information Officers and Chief Technology Officers.”
A special issue of The Banking & Finance Post magazine was also launched at the conclave.
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, Finance Department, Government of Maharashtra, at the recently concluded 3rd Elets BFSI Leadership Summit in Mumbai.){kind=link}