YONO will be completing its second anniversary soon and we are happy to share that it has already disrupted digital banking with the inclusion of lifestyle services. YONO 2.0 will be announced in the next few months. Our target is to become the de-facto digital banking platform in the next few years, says Amit Saxena, Global Deputy CTO, State Bank of India in conversation with Elets News Network (ENN).
How YONO is going to drive customer experience by leveraging Analytics and Artificial Intelligence?
Seamless customer experience is one of the main drivers for YONO (You Only Need One). We are building a number of capabilities in YONO to achieve this goal. Through App Analytics, we capture the customer journey funnel in real-time and assist the customer Just-In-Time ( JIT). Moreover, we get a fair idea about the stickiness of the users towards specific flows of YONO and insights generated through Artificial Intelligence (AI) & ML models that could further enhance their experience by tailor-made offers for their banking & lifestyle needs.
Robotic Process Automation and Adaptive Security are some of the key initiatives that we are in the process of building. We have re-engineered a number of business processes and offloaded some of the jobs that need manual intervention to automation through robotic processes (RPA). With Adaptive Security, we are planning to cover all our user-facing channels of digital banking under the ambit of the security wall, which would profile user context on a real-time basis. Machine Learning (ML) based rules engine would allow only legitimate attempts to access any of our channels. It would be possible to have geo-fencing, travel velocity checks, mutually exclusive channel access, etc. which will further enhance our other very secure channels.
What kind of growth YONO has seen so far?
YONO will be completing its second anniversary soon and we are happy to share that it has already disrupted digital banking with the inclusion of lifestyle services. We have grown significantly in terms of volumes which shows its acceptance amongst the users.
We are confident with YONO 2.0, to be announced in the next few months, we would continue to propel the growth engine. Our target is to become the de-facto digital banking platform in the next few years.
Do you think digital platforms are helping India to make its mark globally in the payment system?
Artificial Intelligence (AI), analytics Just a few years ago such platforms didn’t exist. There were few services based on wallets, but demonetization made people look for digital payment mode. Unlike other countries, like China, mobile payments in India are being built on public infrastructures like Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Aadhaar that allow open-architecture and an inter-operable payment system to evolve. UPI provided a scalable platform built as a layer on top of the existing IMPS platform and heralded a mobile-first approach for a cashless economy. The uniqueness of digital platforms in India is marrying social media platforms to payments platforms seamlessly.
Transfer money to a friend while chatting or pay while browsing on the phone. This platform, powered by UPI, established itself as a high volume, low cost and highly scalable architecture thus marking the advancement of India overpayment services seen in other countries. YONO is positioned to take this a notch higher where banking and lifestyle are bought to the same platform for users.
How challenging it is to manage risk and frauds related to payments in your bank being the CTO?
Balancing security with customer experience is one of the biggest risks in the digital era. There is an expectation of people to match the customer experience and smoothness provided by technology companies and at the same time payment applications should be regulatory compliant. We have to retain customers by providing high-quality user experience and at the same time, the bank has to maintain customer trust by avoiding fraud occurrences like data breaches.
Digital experience and 24*7 banking using connected devices that are not in the bank’s infrastructure brings a multitude of opportunities as well as risks. Evolving technologies have to be leveraged such as adaptive security for user-facing channels to extend the ambit of security wall to the virtual realms along with traditional fraud preventing mechanisms.
What new products are you planning to launch in 2020?
YONO will be the de-facto digital platform of SBI in the next few years. YONO is a digital ecosystem that will be evolving, driven by digital age customer needs all the while catering to a traditional customer base that is spread across various demographics of India. Immersive virtual banking services powered by hyper-automation that has cutting edge security features will be the way forward.
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