PhonePe, digital payments platform today partnered with Flipkart to launch contactless Scan and Pay for Flipkart’s pay-on-delivery orders.
PhonePe’s dynamic QR code solution will enable customers who earlier opted for cash on delivery to pay digitally through any UPI app at the time of delivery. This will help reduce personal contact while ensuring safety, and drive contactless payments for customers who are traditionally more comfortable with cash on delivery.
Ankit Gaur, Director of Business, PhonePe said, “Digital payments adoption has become widespread over the past few years thanks to UPI. However, there still continues to be a preference for cash on delivery among some customers at the time of delivery. Digitising these cash-based payments would give a major boost to not just e-commerce but also contribute to the larger goal of Digital India. Our partnership with Flipkart to enable contactless and safe payments for its Pay on Delivery customers is a big step in that direction. Our solution not just offers a seamless and contactless payment experience to customers but also helps to reduce cash handling costs for e-commerce and logistics companies.”
Ranjith Boyanapalli, Head – Fintech and Payments Group at Flipkart said, “As the lines between e-commerce marketplace and digital payments continue to converge, it becomes imperative to solve for customers’ evolving needs and attitudes. While the pandemic has urged several consumers to make a shift to online shopping, some trust deficit during checkout remains in pockets. With ‘pay-on-delivery’ technology, we want to ensure that customers have peace of mind with their payments and at the same time can shop within the safety of their homes.”
Southeast Asian ride-hailing-to-fintech group Grab and budget airline AirAsia were among more than a dozen bidders involving over 50 companies that are vying for digitalbanking licences in Malaysia, people familiar with the matter said.
Others who submitted bids by Wednesday’s deadline included telecoms operator Axiata and a consortium backed by Chinese tech firm Tencent, said the sources.
They have been drawn in by relatively low financial entry barriers and the promise of a growing army of young smartphone users in a country with a population of more than 32 million.
Malaysia’s move to open up its banking sector comes as Asian markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines are ushering in new players, mostly fintech firms, who are taking on incumbents with their low-cost and newer services.
The Malaysian central bank https://www.bnm.gov.my/-/policy-document-on-licensing-framework-for-digital-banks has said it will issue up to five licences by early 2022.
“Malaysia has many of the characteristics digital banking players are looking for, with a sizeable population, large smartphone penetration and young population eager to try out new services,” said Shankar Kanabiran, financial services consulting partner at EY.
Malaysia requires only 300 million ringgit ($72 million) of capital funds for digital banks, which has drawn interest from fintechs to money remittance companies to co-operatives representing banks and housing sectors.
In contrast, Singapore needed license applicants to have S$1.5 billion ($1.1 billion) in paid-up capital for fully functioning digital banks or S$100 million for digital wholesale banks.
Sources said that most of the applicants for Malaysia’s online-only banks were likely to be local, with only a handful of foreign names such as Southeast Asian internet platform Sea , Grab, and Tencent-backed Linklogis.
Sea, which won a full digital banking licence in Singapore, is partnering with Malaysian conglomerate YTL Corp Bhd , they added.
A joint venture of Grab and Singtel, which also won a full digital banking licence in Singapore, has applied with a consortium of other investors, Singtel said on Thursday.
AirAsia has tied up with a consortium for the application through its fintech unit BigPay, sources said. Axiata has teamed up with RHB Bank.
Sea and BigPay declined to comment while there was no response to a query sent to YTL. The sources declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to the media.
At a news conference last month, Axiata Digital CEO Khairil Abdullah said that a lack of access to credit for a big chunk of Malaysia’s population had created a “very sizeable underserved segment” for the company to tap into.
Maybank, CIMB Group Holdings and Public Bank Bhd dominate Malaysia’s banking sector.
Nomura analysts said in a June report that the entry of digital banks would intensify competition in segments such as deposit pricing, fees, and later, loan pricing where there might be some overlap with conventional banks.
PayU Insights report highlights the key sectors that have been illuminated in lockdown 1.0, pre lockdown 2.0 and lockdown 2.0. Online donations, charitable causes and logistics marches sky-high beat, others remained mere props in their performance. Entertainment and gaming could be quoted in this instance.
There has been a 52 percent increase in transaction volume and a 76 percent increase in expenditure year over year (May 2020 vs. May 2021). There was a 10% rise in the number of transactions after lockdown 2021 compared to pre-lockdown months, and a 21% decrease in average ticket size, demonstrating that customers are adopting online payments even for smaller transactions.
UPI continues to be the headliner, with number of transactions increased by 320% and expenditure increased by 306% in lockdown 2.0. Key insights of the report are as follows:
Online donations to charitable causes
Digital payments for charitable causes were able to get a good growth on the transactions by a massive 731% and expenditure by 2308% in lockdown 1.0. The lockdown 2.0 provides powerful forensic evidence in the record by distending the transactions and expenditure increased by 575% and 476% respectively. Within this category, various NGOs encapsulated activities to raise funds for covid relief.
Logistics hiked with partial and staggered lockdowns
Logistics sector nourished the undeviating growth in both transactions and expenditure with 217% and 227% respectively in lockdown 2.0 with a comparison of ventures as in lockdown 1.0. The utilisation of courier delivery service and purchase and transfer of essential items added proactive grounds to logistics. Further as per the bill passed in budget 2021, the scheme attempt to upsurge the digital payments.
Digital payment activities of Entertainment and gaming demoted
These sectors perceived degrowth. Transactions and expenditure took a major toll in the entertainment sector, hence down turning the activities in lockdown 2.0 by 35% and 41% respectively.
Likewise, the gaming sector too showed a turnaround in trends, declining by 63% compared to pre lockdown months.
The inflated sense of fall could be highlighted on the notion of consumers shifting from non-essential and muting of sentiments in this phase.
Travelling
The aftermath of lockdown 1.0 and 2.0 on travelling magnify the transactions and expenditures by 186% and 125% respectively. The relaxation in staggered lockdown navigated the travelling activities. But immediate lockdown downplayed the experience of transactions by 65% and by 78% in expenditure
UPI Growth
Lockdown 2.0 recorded phenomenal growth for UPI as a payment mode. The number of transactions through UPI increased by 320% and expenditure increased by 306% in lockdown 2.0, compared to lockdown 1.0. The next highest growth in modes of payment was observed in credit card transactions, as the number of transactions increased by 87% and expenditure increased by 69% year on year. For net banking and debit card modes, the number of transactions grew by 12% and 6% respectively year on year.
Pharmacy
The online digital payment transactions and expenditures harped by 78% and 31% respectively in lockdown 2021 compared to pre lockdown months. 9% decrease in transactions and 22% decrease in expenditures was witnessed with every succeeding month.
Retail and e-commerce
The analogy of lockdown 1.0 and 2.0 on account of transactions and expenditure in retail and e-commerce was seen as 171% growth in transactions and 108% in expenditure.
Education
Lockdown 2.0 anticipated expenditures to a growth rate of 37% whereas the transactions slipped by 31% as compared to lockdown 1.0.
Recharge and utility payments
The transactions and expenditures inched by 68% and 11% respectively in lockdown 2.0 compared to pre lockdown.
Groceries
Year on year, number of transactions grew by 171% with 108% growth in expenditure. There was a 52% increase in the number of transactions post lockdown 2.0 compared to pre lockdown months in 2021.
Hemang Dattani, Head–Data Intelligence, PayU said “Broadly, businesses and consumers were better prepared to deal with the exigencies of lockdown in 2021. Given that the lockdown was staggered and geographically restricted, the growth of digital payments has been steady, especially for sectors like retail, logistics & pharma.’’
Flexmoney, a digital credit network platform for lenders and merchants, has raised $4.8 million in Series A funding, led by Pravega Ventures with participation from Silicon Valley-based Z5 Capital.
The round also saw participation from several marquee individual investors including Ben Davey, former Group Head of Strategy, Barclays Bank & CEO Barclays Ventures; Mike Smith, former Chief Product & Technology Officer, Barclays Ventures & Director, Amazon Core Display Ad Platform; Ambarish Malpani, successful serial entrepreneur and technologist and Rishad Byramjee, Group MD and CEO Casby Logistics & Board Member, Centrum Group.
Flexmoney aims to use the funds to scale its credit network footprint to more lenders and merchants, launch additional products and consolidate its position. Flexmoney had previously raised seed funding from multiple global and domestic angel investors.
Nanda Krish, General Partner at Z5 Capital, said: “InstaCred by Flexmoney is already the largest ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ platform in India, and the need and potential for this Internet credit infrastructure spans across even more global markets. We’re proud and excited to partner with Flexmoney to scale up and revolutionise the credit ecosystem in India and across the globe”.
Yezdi Lashkari, Founder and CEO of Flexmoney Technologies, said, “Flexmoney’s digital credit platform provides a seamless and secure ‘plug and play’ proposition for trusted lenders and merchants to offer the widest set of options for frictionless, secure, instant checkout finance to their customers and is transforming their purchase experience. With this funding, we are one step closer to achieving our vision of simplifying and democratising consumer credit in India”.
Maintaining the cost of acquiring customers digitally is not easy as multiple banks & Fintechs are targeting the same set of customer base segment as compared to the physical branch led model where the costs are fixed.
Organisations acquiring customers digitally have often been at the mercy of aggregators and big search engines and so is the case similar with banks trying to funnel in customers through digital marketing and other platforms.
Ritesh Saxena, Head – Direct Banking at IndusInd Bank in a conversation with ETBFSI talks about the strategy at IndusInd Bank with digital acquisition, how digital marketing plays a role, important metrics and the partnership model. Edited Excerpts:
Ritesh Saxena, Head – Direct Banking, IndusInd Bank
Q. What is the strategy for digital business at IndusInd Bank?
The banking service is digital in nature with cash being the only physical aspect. To a large extent digital business in banking is evolving as compared to 3-4 years back when a lot of digital enablement was in nature of servicing only and not a way of doing business.
As a challenger bank, we had to be aggressive. Digital business evolved in two stages, one organic and inorganic – website, social media presence, ATMs which are web-enabled, mobile applications are now transformed into customer acquisition channels whereas previously functioned more from servicing point. Regulations and public infrastructure like Aadhar has helped a lot, we brought onboarding platforms on our web to acquire for both our asset & deposit customers.
KYC is just one part of onboarding, the customer does not give any business till he transacts or passes credit worthiness test. Getting these journeys completely digital, frictionless and seamless is important to ensure prospective customers don’t drop off.
Investments have gone beyond technology infrastructure, like – analytics, evolving credit models, partnerships with payment service providers. These internal and external parts come together to funnel the customer in and service them. The loss in physical onboarding through branches was off-set by digital acquisition channel through digital marketing with seamless onboarding to ensure there was no blip to business.
Q. How is digital marketing leveraged for direct digital business?Digital marketing is the other area of evolution which is core to digital business. While we create the digital platforms, we need to have a digital plan to work with platforms like Google and Facebook to get the right economics of acquiring customers. All Fintechs, start-ups have realised that creating a product, simple user journey is perhaps the easier part given all the tech evolution is happening, but getting the customer economics in (cost of customer acquisition) which does not kill you is tough. Reality is these Big Tech platforms don’t let you do digital marketing in a cost-friendly manner. That is the sad story which a lot of start-ups face and burn a lot of cash.
We banks don’t have investors (VC) funds to burn to get customers as it’s a P&L involved decision of optimising your cost of acquisition through various digital marketing initiatives like SEO, Redirecting advertisements and a lot of other initiatives.
Getting a customer and is he really worth following as few might funnel but not all are worth following. These are things that take time to perfect and eventually get the right implemental economics.
Digital marketing led acquisition is a different ball game as physical acquisition costs are fixed and given. Also, important to note banks are eyeing for the same pie of the business on the same medium for the same customer, unit economics really matters here.
Fintechs have mono-product lines as compared to banks that have multiple products, if a customer funnels in and may not have qualified for a credit card; we can pitch him a credit card against his FD so he gets serviced by some other product.
Most customers are price sensitive and everything is price led, it allows you to optimise the investments to get the customer by ensuring if he is not satisfied with one product you are able to get him another product and it’s a win-win.
Q. How does it work with the existing customer base?
Existing customers have been traditionally covered by RMs or through branches or contact centers for cross-sell or upgrading. The new digital platforms backed by analytics have allowed us to run it centrally without the need of assisted channels as a start point.
The bank has invested in a very Deep Artificial Intelligence led engine which runs across products and client databases from different segments like deposit to credit card to vehicle finance. I have that same universe within the bank. All we need is to create an ability similar to what aggregators (like Paisabazaar, Bank Bazaar) created for the open market.
A lot of good work and actual business has happened on the asset cross sell which is personal loan and credit card offerings to customers who keep their salary account or deposit account with us. More than 50% of our retail lending, deposit and even wealth business happens through digital channels and not just through open market but through a lot of analytics led, direct to customer, app based, email based and if required even tele-assisted follow-up for closure and a lot of these businesses have moved out of branches.
This is the next version of retail banking in India, if IndusInd Bank has 2000 branches in India which do an X business, for it to go 2X do we need 2X branches? or can I move all of the next X business to digital platforms without having to put a brick and mortar branch. That’s essentially the go-to. Physical channels will continue but a lot of the assisted business is moving to the sky RM models (digital).
Q. How are the metrics around digital marketing?
We doubled and tripled the investments in the digital marketing front across products and services not because we wanted to offset the dip in branch led business but because more customers were reaching out through these digital platforms. Pull-based business opportunities like health insurance were also in demand; a lot of digital marketing initiatives got fast tracked.
Video KYC changed the economics and at a fraction of physical cost we can do the physical KYC and do multiple business with him or would’ve been only one business of deposit before video-KYC where the customer wasn’t verified face-to-face.
On vectors being measured, earlier things were not straight through; most of our digital marketing arrangement partners were on the basis of cost per lead which captured mobile number either paid on per lead or impressions. Now the straight through journey changed the equation on this, earlier you were at the mercy of the aggregators and what would be the quality of the lead as banks make money on conversion of that lead.
The equation has moved from paying per lead to paying per converted customer and some of those have helped focus to target better and ensure that the same lead is not going to dozens of banks and see sub-optimal conversion.
Digital business is not only about aggregator arrangements it’s also on the payment side where merchant aggregators which are country wide operating in the payment gateway space and non-digital merchant led aggregators like old-age Pine Labs and similar players and how they’ve metamorphosed and deeply integrated with banks through APIs.
These payment partners get merchant customers to bank equivalent to current account journeys which have been created with more control as entity verification is bigger science than individual verification. For entities, you’ve to check their registrations, office, etc. all these risk parameters have been added to the onboarding mechanism and we have been among the first ones to launch a digital current account onboarding.
Global digital currency exchanges are exploring ways to set up in India, following in the footsteps of market leader Binance, industry sources told Reuters, while the government in New Delhi dithers over introducing a law that could ban cryptocurrencies.
Opponents of the potential ban say it would stifle the economic power of a tech-savvy, young nation of 1.35 billion people. There is no official data, but industry analysts reckon there are 15 million crypto investors in India holding over ₹100 billion ($1.37 billion).
According to four sources, who declined to be identified as they were not authorised to comment on private discussions, US-based Kraken, Hong Kong-based Bitfinex and rival KuCoin are actively scouting the market, which analysts say would only get bigger if it was given a free rein. “These companies have already begun talks to understand the Indian market and the entry points better,” said one source directly involved with an exchange that had begun due diligence for an Indian firm it was considering acquiring.
The other two exchanges, he said, were in the initial stages of deciding whether to enter India and weighing their options, which effectively come down to a choice between setting up a subsidiary or buying an Indian firm, as Binance, the world’s biggest exchange, did two years ago.
Bitfinex declined to comment while Kraken and KuCoin did not respond to an email seeking comment.
All three exchanges are ranked in the world’s top ten by data platform CoinMarketCap, based on their traffic, liquidity and trustworthiness of their reported trading volumes.
“The Indian market is huge and it is only starting to grow, if there was more policy certainty by now Indian consumers would have been spoilt for choice in terms of exchanges, because everyone wants to be here,” said Kumar Gaurav, founder of digital bank Cashaa.
Proponents of cryptocurrencies say they would be the most cost-efficient way for Indians abroad to remit funds home.
But authorities worry that rich people and criminals could hide their wealth in the digital world, and speculative flows of funds through digital channels, ungoverned by India’s strict exchange controls, could destabilise the financial system.
Caution across globe
Hitherto, India has had no rules specifically for cryptocurrency exchanges wishing to set up in the country. Instead they could register themselves as tech companies to obtain a relatively easy entry path.
In 2019, Binance acquired WazirX, an Indian cryptocurrency start-up which has allowed users to buy and sell crypto with rupees on the Binance Fiat Gateway.
US based exchange Coinbase has announced plans for a back office in India.
But with the regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies taking a turn for worse globally, Indian authorities are exercising greater scrutiny.
In China, authorities have forbidden banks and online payment companies from providing services related to cryptocurrency transactions.
And the Indian government was set to present a Bill to Parliament by March that proposed a ban on cryptocurrencies, making trading and holding them illegal. But the government has held it back, and conflicting statements since have fuelled uncertainty over the Bill’s fate.
Meantime, major Indian banks have begun to sever ties with cryptocurrency exchanges and traders, amid Reserve Bank of India’s concerns about the financial stability risks posed by the volatile asset.
The RBI is looking at launching its own digital currency, but Governor Shaktikanta Das in February described those plans as a “work in progress”.
For all the uncertainty over what India will end up doing, some digital currency exchanges clearly reckon it would be better to gain entry rather than miss out.
“It’s clear that the rewards outweigh the perceived risks, which is luring these global firms to the Indian market,” said Darshan Bathija, chief executive officer of Vauld, a foreign crypto exchange with a presence in India.
As digital adoption picks up across the board, RBL Bank continues to remain aggressive on its branch expansion to improve its presence across the country. RBL Bank’s head for branch banking, Surinder Chawla, talks about the strategy of branch expansion and business, user behaviour evolving across retail and MSMEs and the way forward. Edited Excerpts:
Surinder Chawla, Head – Branch Banking, RBL Bank
Q. How’s the shift in the branch banking business strategy taking into consideration the impact of the pandemic and lockdowns subsequently?
Multiple changes have happened before and after the lockdown.
The last 3-4 months have been very different from how we look and approach things. The first big change is digitisation. Customer adoption of digital technologies has been very high compared to earlier. That is a big change, and it is a good change from customers as well from the bank point of view. The second big change is that earlier you had to meet clients to get work done and all that is done digitally even from a product perspective. The third big factor is some products which were push based, because of the pandemic/ health concerns of the client, those have become very accepted by the clientele. The biggest jump that has happened is in health insurance. As a strategy what all is happening is our investment in digital has become digitally large. If you want to scale up, serve customers digitally, whether it is full Net banking or Whatsapp banking. We have put almost all of our products and services on the digital platform.
From the liabilities and CASA point of view, engagement has become so much more because digitally frequency is here. The strategy is digital, engaging and making sure that the client does most of the things on his own. We roughly have now 20-25,000 digital accounts being added per month and it was around 12,000 in January-February 2021. Last year this number would have been 5-7,000 before lockdown. Q. How is the impact on SME and small business clientele? Is the same shift happening at the same speed or is it slow there?
If someone wants to trade in cash, then you have to connect with them physically. Apart from that, everything is digitally possible. We have a way of processing documents digitally. Most of the clients’ needs can be carried through digital channels. RBI last week allowed video KYC for sole proprietorship. Of course, cash will be an exception. There is also enablement happening for the business guys. That shift, which was slow so far, will become very fast paced now. Q. How’s the user behaviour evolving in MSME clientele and how neo-bank platforms are targeting them?
That is working well. Let us not forget that an MSME business client has never done something digitally, he has done digitally but also done physically. All the neo-banks are providing a layer over the current account and other services like invoicing, billing, tax planning, etc. That demand was there earlier and still there. The changes were primarily on the account opening side. Physical interaction was required but now the video-KYC is available, it is a game-changer. More and more banks are taking trade documents digitally. More and more banks will move services digitally. So, that pace is bound to pick up. The problem will be for those banks who want to deal in cash.Q. What are the plans for RBL bank in the branch expansion model? Would you look at rationalising?
So talking about RBL in specific, we do not have a large network. We only have 429 branches as of March. For us, branch expansion plans continue to be aggressive as we must increase our coverage. Let us not forget that Indian consumers may do a lot of work digitally, having the branch closer will increase their confidence. Branch in my view will still play an important role. The difference will be that the number of branches will decrease compared to before. While engagement is digital, the Indian consumer may want to meet someone for confidence. We are planning to add 75 more branches compared to 40-45 branches last year as we have a small network.
Q. How is the impact of the second Covid wave panning out on customers acquisition, transactions etc?
I will divide the impact on the liabilities and asset sides. For the liabilities apart from the fact that people are not coming to the branches, we were able to do fairly well. We have ramped up our digital capabilities. The number of accounts opened was in the same range as what we were doing earlier. From that angle, there has not been a significant impact. In terms of transactions, only the cash transactions have taken a hit, our customers transacted digitally. The engagement rate was high, and customers did not really face a challenge.
Q. As unlocking of lockdowns has started, what’s the way forward?
On the liabilities side, I expect to be fairly good. We have been spending more time and effort in improving the quality of our liability profile as well. We look to make sure that our book is more granular, our cost of funds has come down, we are able to get more customers. We plan to open branches, we expect that CASA ratio improves.
It is an uncertain time for the life insurance sector amidst the ongoing second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic and forecast of a third wave, said Tarun Chugh, Managing Director and CEO, Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance. In an interview with BusinessLine, he said that while the industry is expecting higher claims, it is not much of a concern. Excerpts:
What is your outlook for this year?
It is uncertain at this point of time. Normally, when we start the first quarter, we are clear about the strategy, but it is an uncertain time this year given how things have panned out in May. It is very difficult to forecast anything. This year, we are going more with scenario planning and not a forecast of the year as we don’t know when this wave will end and then there is a forecast of a third wave. The only thing we are certain about is that the usage of digital will keep increasing and we expect customers to still get life insurance in their portfolio because of the desire to cover risks.
Are high mortality claims an issue for the life insurance industry?
In respect to Covid claims, Bajaj Allianz Life has settled over 1,300 claims amounting to more than ₹74 crore. We are sensing that there will be higher mortality and impact on some claims. But last year too, we didn’t get the claims very early. It takes families some time to recover. But it is not a concern for the industry. All companies are comfortably placed in reserves. This year’s number will take a hit but nothing beyond that.
What is your strategy for the year?
Our first focus area is employee safety. We will be able to launch an employee vaccination programme soon. We are also focussing on growing our digital assets. We are also focussing on keeping our branches open and about 80 per cent of our branches are still open but with very limited staff.
Unlike last year, all products are in demand unlike this year. May has not been a great month due to the lockdown. However, the uptake of term and guaranteed products continues. This time, since markets are doing well, ULIPs are also popular. The Budget proposal has not impacted ULIPs too much. We have seen an uptick in ULIPs less than Rs 2.5 lakh and some dip in above Rs 2.5 lakh but not significant. There is just a three to four per cent shift. The number of customers buying ULIPs less than Rs 2.5 lakh has gone up.
How have life insures made underwriting norms tougher post Covid?
It has been a tough year for claims and underwriting has become stricter. For example, we have added a Covid questionnaire. But if somebody goes for their medicals and submits documents properly and fills up the Covid questionnaire, there is not so much of an issue. For people who have had Covid, we tell them to wait for 90 days and then apply for life insurance.
Is another round of hike in term insurance rates expected?
In the last 15 to 20 year, rates for term insurance have come down significantly. The industry had hit the bottom in terms of pricing and a correction was due and Covid became the right time for the price hike. I won’t be surprised if there is a slight price hike now as well but we will have to wait and watch. The increase will vary from insurer to insurer.
Are you launching any new products?
We recently launched our pension plan and that has done very well, particularly as in pensions, we don’t need to get any medicals done and the age group of above 45 has a lot more money. This has surprised us a lot in its uptake and about 12 per cent to 13 per cent of our entire business is coming from pensions.
Any plans to use the higher foreign direct investment cap for the insurance sector?
It is more of a shareholder matter and there has not been any move in that direction. We are fully capitalised, we have the highest amount of capital and reserves. There is no requirement of money.
Ujjivan SFB has tied-up with Progcap for end-to-end digitisation of invoice-based financing of MSMEs for their small tenor working capital requirements. This ties-up the bank’s venture into supply chain financing and will fund dealers, sub-dealers against purchases made from recognised brands through short-term overdraft facility.
The bank said, “The entire lending process, right from the lead generation, lead screening, loan sanctioning, document execution and customer on-boarding and repayments has been digitized through Progcap’s data-driven tech platform.”
Rajiv Kumar Pathak, Business Head – Medium and Small Enterprise, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank said, “This is a win–win arrangement for all stake holders in the MSME business ecosystem i.e. bank, fintech partner, buyers and suppliers. The customer gets working capital in the form of supply chain finance against the invoices raised along with freedom to clear dues with regular cash flow. Digital on-boarding gives us an access to larger geography where we don’t have direct reach through USFB branch network.”
Dheemant Thacker, Head – Digital Banking, Ujjivan Small Finance Bank said, “Driving business through fintech partnerships using Ujjivan Small Finance Bank’s full-stack API Banking platform is at the core of our digital strategy. With our first such partnership in the SME space – Progcap, we are able to offer fully digital, innovative lending services to small businesses and partner with them in their growth. In a short period of time, we have been able to offer supply chain financing to a significant number of businesses and will continue to ramp up our efforts to support these businesses as they battle the uncertainties of the current pandemic.”
Pallavi Shrivastava, Co-Founder, Progcap said, “Supporting MSMEs linked with large corporates is core to what we do at Progcap. We are excited to partner with Ujjivan Bank in this journey. Combined with Progcap’s industry first product that uses heavy data driven underwriting and Ujjivan’s digital first approach, we aim to offer this product to a large number of underserved MSMEs. Progcap is working with similar technology driven lending partners in furthering its mission to support millions of small businesses access credit for the first time.”
Private life insurer Bharti AXA Life Insurance has entered into a bancassurance partnership with Shivalik Small Finance Bank for the distribution of its life insurance products through the bank’s pan-India network of branches.
Under this agreement, Bharti AXA Life Insurance will offer its suite of life insurance products, including protection, health, savings and investment plans, to customers of Shivalik Small Finance Bank across its 31 branches and digital network across the country.
This alliance will enable over 4.5 lakh customers of Shivalik Bank to access the range of products offered by the company to provide financial security.
Commenting on the association, Parag Raja, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Bharti AXA Life Insurance, said in a statement: “The outbreak of Covid-19 has led to a notable shift in customers’ perception of life insurance, which is fundamentally about protection. With our alliance with Shivalik Bank, we shall empower the bank’s customers with protection and holistic insurance solutions and help us strengthen our commitment while reaching out to urban, tier-II and tier-III markets. We believe this partnership will enrich our distribution footprint and help us increase insurance penetration in the country.”
Suveer Kumar Gupta, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Shivalik Small Finance Bank, said this alliance is a part of the bank’s various measures towards financial inclusion and acceleration of wealth creation for its customers.