State bank of India, being the largest public sector bank of the country carries a lot of responsibility because we are the bank to the nation. So, the biggest question for us just after the outbreak of the pandemic was what should be done on priority. All this got all of us into a situation that we have never thought of. But despite the adversities, we performed well, said Amit Saxena, Deputy Chief Technology Officer – Digital Banking, State Bank of India.
While sharing his views during NextGen BFSI Virtual Summit organised by Elets Technomedia in association with The Banking & Finance Post magazine, Saxena spoke on the impact of Covid-19 outbreak on the lender and the decisions taken by the bank to overcome the challenges.
Commenting on Work From Home model, he said, “We had done all the exercises for the Business Continuity Plan but we had never done what we call as XCP which is about human continuity. In this case, the systems were working fine but we were not sure if humans can be made available and how the systems will function. This is the learning curve for the bank as we moved away from the office and worked from home. But in these tough times also we actually performed well. We witnessed increased productivity during this time.”
“The first lockdown happened on the 21st of March and by 30th or 31st March, we were supposed to have an annual meeting. For a bank of our size, annual closing exercise is a humongous task and we were able to do it very successfully,” he said.
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He further said, “Moving forward, we have got a digital platform called YONO on which we have been providing all our digital solutions. We have seen the adoption of that during these three months was a multiplying factor and let me put it this way, we never thought that so many people would get registered despite being the largest bank in the country having 760 million account and 421 million customers. We used this opportunity and we have rolled out new services, new features onto a digital group. It’s a 100 percent end-to-end digital platform wherein you can open an account without even visiting the branch and you can complete your KYC.”
