With technologies like Generative AI, India Stack, and 5G making waves, how do you see these innovations reshaping the future of BFSI, particularly in driving accessibility and personalisation?
We are at the cusp of technology not just transforming but re-creating how financial services & consumers will engage with one another. Consumer expectations at the back of technology are changing faster than BFSIs’ ability to navigate through this shift. Business models, customer experience, product, service delivery, technology and risk landscape, all are getting challenged.
There will be several slow and careful walkers and a few controlled runners. This will differentiate between runners & winners. Having said this, there is no magic bullet. Technology like AI, GenAI, Cloud, Digital Public Infrastructure, 5G, Open source, and Edge/Fog computing is universally available to everyone. Differentiators will be around strategy, prioritisation, alignment and execution to create value for all stakeholders including customers.
Digital transformation is vital to modern banking. Could you share your approach to developing digital platforms that resonate with customers, and the role that digital marketing and data analytics play in scaling these platforms successfully?
It’s time banks re-look at product and silos-led structure and technology stacks. Customers like to see their financial service provider helping them in their journey and do better. Be it securing their future, helping them grow their business, buying an asset, moving up in life or planning their future. These are all slow-money spaces connected with human emotions.
All products and experiences will get embedded around customers’ motivation, anxiety, and challenges. This means products, services, data, marketing and technology stack need to get re-aligned around the customers they serve. Fast money like payment and transactions will get embedded.
I envisage platforms around customer segments like retail mass, mass affluent, affluent, small business, and mid, large corporate will evolve. These will be by building a common foundational model, dual-core, hybrid cloud, scalable architecture, configurable orchestration layer, personalised products & hybrid/multi-channel experience, and embedded AI across all systems & processes. Technology, products, and customer journeys will be all integrated across physical, and digital channels and ecosystems.
Given your experience in WealthTech and SaaS, how do you foresee these sectors evolving in India, especially in terms of customer adoption, competitive differentiation, and creating long-term value?
We are seeing transformation across the wealth management space. Customers’ financial habits are changing and this is leading to a shift from Savers to Investors, Investors to Portfolio management & wealth management. Thanks to increasing awareness and digital access, the affluent and mass affluent have started to appreciate the merit of financial planning, risk assessment and asset allocation. Gold, alternate assets, Bonds, REIT, AIF, and Overseas investment have created more avenues for investors to plan their portfolio for the long term and medium term.
WealthTech and SaaS across distribution and advisory will continue to grow. New business models, the advent of digital platforms, choice across asset classes, and unbiased advisory will provide customers with greater choice. WealthTech firms are leveraging data, customer insights, and Technology to reshape personalised recommendation, transaction and product experiences.
In a rapidly evolving financial landscape, what are some of the common challenges fintech startups face in scaling their models? What guidance would you offer to founders aiming for sustainable growth in a highly competitive environment?
Getting beyond the first 10 steps is the key. Deep customer insights on challenges, motivation, and unserved/underserved needs should be at the core. You can’t mean everything to everyone at the start. So positioning, Customer Value proposition, communication, differentiation and speed of execution give you the right to play. However, to move to the next phase of right to stay and then right to win, one needs to shift levers.
How you consolidate and move to the next level is like classic satellite launch play. Each stage will require smart navigation & decoupling across models, technology, and value yet deeply connected to the core mission of helping customers do well. If you are not designing an organisation, business model, or customer insights for RUN then the crawl and walk phase won’t help much after a certain point. This is where the highest mortality happens. Also, risk, compliance and trust should be baked in day zero organisation. You can’t regain any of these with customers, or regulators at a later date. Moving fast without adequate brakes and control is a recipe for disaster.
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With increasing regulatory focus on digital transformation, data security, and credit risk management, how should financial institutions balance innovation with compliance to build resilient and customer-centric solutions?
Regulations and risk are part of all business, more so in financial services where trust is paramount. Let me give you a couple of analogy.
Can you launch faster, comfortable and more efficient aircraft with 99% safety records? Then how can you run a financial service business with 98-99% records on trust, privacy, compliance, risk, and technology resilience? In the name of innovation & moving fast, you can’t be careless and cause accidents.
Like airlines, people trust financial services. You are dealing with lives or money; it puts immense responsibility on the people designing and operating it. This is the core of business value. This means rather than rushing through 20 initiatives, do 5 and do it well. Test it well. Product, Technology, and business should all see risk alongside innovation. Risk & security should be integrated across the day zero framework. This helps align all stakeholders better while fostering innovation.
Like a car, Acceleration without proper brakes and controls will lead to an accident sooner than later.
How do you see cloud technology advancing in the financial sector, and what impact do you believe it will have on enhancing scalability, security, and operational efficiency in banking?
Not a simple Yes or No answer. Going to the cloud is like renting a house if you have one and that too in the same city/location vs another city. The rationale for the cloud and leveraging the cloud should be at the core of the Cloud Strategy.
Building flexible, modern, scalable architecture, and cloud-ready applications is a multi-year journey for banks. Unless you have an end-to-end vision, business value, technology roadmap, modernisation, cloud skill sets, risk and control understanding, it can be an inefficient outcome. While SaaS deployment for certain applications is no no-brainer, taking the existing workload on the cloud needs careful evaluation and long-term commitment. Also, Private, Hybrid, public, and Multi-cloud approaches need to be debated and arrived at early in the process. The choice of various components depends on this and once made, this can’t be reversed easily again. Organisations also need to ensure business case, value, and Opex/capex model are well understood at the Board level.
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