Head – Digital Bank
Nainital Bank Ltd.
Digitisation has opened new vistas for the banking sector. The essence of the revolution is not just for digital sake but to ensure respite from the cash leakage, says Manish A Shah, Head – Digital Bank, Nainital Bank Ltd., in conversation with Rashi Aditi Ghosh of Elets News Network (ENN).
Tell us about your products and services.
Nainital Bank is a full-fledged bank and it operates in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and a couple of other states in northern India. There are a lot of opportunities for us to grow especially because we don’t have any physical presence outside these States.
We are focusing on reaching, servicing and acquiring customers in the digital domain. We are a year away from our target. Our journey has just commenced and we are working hard in making our digital endeavours a success.
We are aiming to become a universal bank for our chosen set of segments. We will heavily focus on transforming the country into a cashless economy.
Banking sector is transforming in sync with the “Digital India” drive, what are the initiatives taken by your bank in this regard?
We don’t have any major initiatives as of now because we have just started our journey. But we are definitely gearing up in ensuring the same.
The essence of digital revolution is not just for digital sake. Digital Banking is essentially about ensuring respite from the cash leakage. The whole genesis of “Digital India” is reaching directly to the beneficiary.
In addition to this, digitisation intends to eradicate black money and it is also giving an opportunity to several people to come into the formal sector.
For example, before digitisation, a taxi driver working in a city used to get his salary in cash. He had to use informal ways to send the money to his family in the village.
But after digitisation, everyone eqipped with a smart phone can access banking and by using the formal mode anyone can transfer money in no time.
A person, who had no bank account, can now apply for a formal loan and can also avail all the banking services, without paying anything extra to the money lender. Thanks to financial inclusion and digitisation.
Digital revolution has much more to offer as far as financial services are concerned than just taking transactions electronically.
How is digitisation boosting the concept of financial inclusion?
Digitisation makes banking a convenient option for the users and this is the reason why it is boosting financial inclusion. Banking in the rural segment is less popular. But due to onset of digitisation, a large section of the unbanked population is now part of the formal banking system and this inclusion is much more than just opening of zero balance accounts.
Many organisations like Ola and Uber have provided good employment opportunities to the rural populace and therefore, acted as a catalyst for financial inclusion.
These people now have a credit score and are eligible to avail several banking luxuries.
The essence of digital revolution is not just for digital sake. Digital Banking is essentially about ensuring respite from the cash leakage.
With digitisation the risk of getting infested to malware is also high, what are the measures initiated by your bank to ensure a secured banking?
It is extremely important to have security systems in place before enabling digital banking. There is a fundamental requirement to ensure layers of encryptions.
When we talk about Aadhaar, telecomm and financial companies are merely allowed to use the authenticated info but they don’t have any access to the card holder’s biometrics. As that information is stored in a data base which is different from the accessed path of the transaction.
A lot of these basic principles are being looked at our end.
Earlier, all the transactions were made internally and the users have very less information about it. But today every one can see their transaction details and access it online.
A customer having an access to the banking system is new so some of the basic concepts of the security systems are need to be incorporated.
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