Fintech market in India is likely to expand to $31 billion in 2020. I foresee that the synergy between Fintech and Banks in key areas especially lending, payments and wealth management will be on the forefront which will be driven by both emerging and established platform players says P. Venkatesh, Co-Founder and Director – Temenos Core Transformation Business, Maveric Systems, in conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).
- How do you see the role of fintech expanding in India during Covid-19?
Fintech market in India is likely to expand to $31 billion in 2020. However, let us look at the Urban/rural divide and the nature of Fintechs that would be relevant in this context.
Instant payment facilitated by BHIM and actively promoted by other e-wallets players is already present and is serving well in the urban locations.
In the rural location, there is a need for cash and ATM/Post office serves as the agency. If this is to be mitigated, then feature phone led coupons or similar means are to be found out. This would emerge in due course.
- Fintech synergy with banks has been mentioned in several research reports. What are your views on this?
The emerging trends in the digital world such as:
De-coupling of the manufacturer, distributor, and servicer – This is currently present in fund management; Fund and schemes of a Fund manager are distributed by a number of banks and is often commonly serviced by a fund processor. Similar de-coupling would occur across the retail banking space covering both liability and asset products
The emergence of platforms– I foresee that the synergy between Fintech and Banks in key areas especially lending, payments and wealth management will be on the forefront which will be driven by both emerging and established platform players. The banks which have these services can see if they can benefit from them through lower cost of operation or better reach to customers; similarly, those not currently having these, these platforms present an opportunity to enlarge their offering.
Engagement with the customer – The necessity to be the primary form of engagement with the customer is of utmost importance to any bank or fintech. In the digital world, customer will play the leadership role; therefore, banks would try to segment their customer and partner with a set of fintechs and lifestyle products/services providers to make their platform central. Those banks that wish to hold the customer will make this option.
In India, segmented players are emerging in the hospitality, instant personal loans, international payments, and wealth management segments. Market estimates suggest that these players would have seen 2X to 3X increase in the business because of the COVID – 19 situations.
- The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic has impacted economies worldwide. What are your strategies to face the challenges and prepare for the opportunities?
Operating countries:
From the countries that we operate in, US has created the largest at USD 1 trillion- nearly 7% of their GDP. Most of the Middle East countries have created the first level stimulus amounting to 5% of their GDP while Bahrain’s stimulus is nearly 25% of its GDP. EU has established across all countries a similar fund to the extent of 5% of their GDP. At Maveric, we are watching closely the developments in the United Kingdom.
Operating segment:
Industry domain that we operate in –banking. It is going to be a key channel in the current scenario. We are watchful of the developments across the geographies that we operate in. We anticipate, Retail banking would not be impacted in the immediate term however, commercial or business banking would bear the brunt.
Services:
Discretionary programs would come under stress as governments would want banks to respond to new schemes launched for the pandemic; therefore, banks might have to re-prioritize their programs to accommodate them. We anticipate digital and automation initiatives would increase since the banks might want to be prepared for extended period of the pandemic or for a new attack. We are building our talent pipeline across all the business units and also strengthening the infrastructure to support any spike in the project pipeline.
- Would you like to tell us about specialized competencies across the BFSI sector? What new and innovative have you planned for the year?
Maveric systems accelerate transformation initiatives across data, digital, core banking and quality engineering for a banking institution. As an organization who has carved a niche for itself in the banking domain, we drive these transformation engagements through conscious contextualization, comprehensive competencies and core commitment.
We believe Quality Engineering forms a strong foundation of any digital transformation and hence accelerated development to delivery of defects-free software with continuous quality engineering is our focus. The team at QE has developed a platform based on low code to perform automation of the entire lifecycle of testing.
The Digital business unit has its focus on microservice architecture and cloud enablement to drive unique experience engineering. In Core banking, we have a specialized competency on digital platforms implementation and whereas the Data Tech business unit focusses domain-led
data models, real-time data integration and 3 layered accuracy assertion, to provide conscious contextualization with regards to customer management through behavioral scoring.
- Digital is termed as one of the biggest opportunities post the COVID outbreak. How are you making use of it in a bid to reach your consumers?
Post-COVID, we see that the global economy is going to be coming to terms with the new reality and yes as you rightly said ‘Digital’ is going to be the new normal as the organizations will grapple with challenges such as decreasing revenues and increasing costs.
At Maveric, we are focusing our energies on the following –
(a) Re-engineering the business models
(b) Adopting to newer technology stacks and platforms
(c) Working towards integrating them with the financial technology ecosystem
We believe working with these priorities with an unprecedented speed will be the game changer for effective transformation both for us and for our customers as well.
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