Tag: ETBFSI Converge

Bank branch addition drops 82% in FY21; bankers bet on phygital model, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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The branch addition by banks fell to a decade low in fiscal 2021, felled by digitisation, pandemic and growth of alternative channels such as business correspondents.

Banks added only 1,383 branches in FY2021 as against 7,728 branches in FY2020.

As of March-end 2021, the network of offices of scheduled commercial banks increased to 1,54,485 from 1,53,102 as against a year ago, as per RBI data.

The consolidation of banks into five large banks too led to a drop in the number of branches as banks went for right sizing of operations following the amalgamation of several PSBs.

Phygital model

Even as there is a surge in adoption of digital banking, physical branches will continue to be relevant as a large percentage of customers are more comfortable doing transactions at branches, according to bankers.

Banks should make efforts in educating customers about various aspects of digital banking so that they can conveniently use these channels.

“I think branches, as a mode or a channel, will not be totally discounted. There is still a significant population who will be more comfortable in one-to-one dealings rather than only digital.

“Therefore, this world of physical plus digital or phygital will be the way forward,” State Bank of India Managing Director Ashwini K Tiwari said at ETBFSI Converge.

City Union Bank Managing Director and CEO N Kamakodi said that though the older generations are much comfortable with the manual banking channel, many of them are now trying to use the digital channel also.

“Around 90 per cent of the banking transactions in India have now started moving into the non-branch channel such as internet banking, mobile banking or ATM. The number of transactions happening at the branches are in single digit,” he said.

Business correspondent growth

The business correspondent outlets of public sector banks in villages have shrunk during 2016 and 2020 while private banks have shown positive growth.

“PSBs dominated the number of BC outlets in villages, but during the review period, on account of consolidation, their BC outlets showed negative growth,” according to an RBI study said.

PSBs’ share in BC village outlets has dropped marginally to 57 per cent in 2020 from 60 per cent in 2016.

The growth in BC outlets in villages was also negative for regional rural banks.

The share of PSBs in BC outlets in rural areas has remained consistently above 60% over the years, being the highest among the bank groups.

Private banks shine

As PSBs continued to maintain their hold, PVBs too registered a higher growth in both access and usage indicators during the review period. There was a growth in BC outlets in villages for PVBs with the growth being significantly high for the north-eastern, eastern and central regions, surpassing the growth of PSBs and RRBs together.

PVBs also significantly improved their tally of urban BC outlets during the five years with their share growing from 77 per cent in 2016 to 97 per cent in 2020. On similar lines, contribution of PVBs in the total number of BC agents too grew exponentially from 37 per cent in 2016 to 80 per cent in 2020.

The BC model grows

“From being an alternate delivery model, the BC model is emerging as the predominant delivery model. While the growth in number of rural branches remained subdued during the review period, there was a significant growth in BC outlets in both villages and urban pockets providing formal financial services at the doorstep of large number of unserved/underserved population,” the study said.

The study noted that about 56 per cent of total Basic Savings Bank Deposit Accounts (BSBDAs) and 65 per cent of General Credit Cards (GCCs) were channelled through BCs. While BCs of public sector banks (PSBs) dominated the deposit space, private sector banks (PVBs) accounted for a major share in GCCs through BCs.

During the review period, the total transactions routed through BC outlets increased considerably both in terms of volume as well as value, it said.



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Technology, collaborations, personalisation will drive customer experience, say top bankers, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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Zuzar Tinwalla and Charu Mathur were part of a fireside chat, moderated by Amol Dethe, Editor, ETBFSI.

BFSI companies have been undergoing rapid digitisation for some years now. While many organisations had already been at the forefront in digitisation, the COVID-19 pandemic further amplified this adoption of new technologies.

“Pandemic has presented us with both difficulties and opportunities,” said Zuzar Tinwalla, COO-India & South Asia, Standard Chartered Bank at a fireside chat of ETBFSI Converge, titled ‘Crafting Tailor Made Products for Customers’.

Customer centric models

“Earlier, technologies were designed by keeping the internal processes guidelines and efficiency in mind, but that’s no longer the reality. Now, to be relevant, you have to keep the customer’s needs in mind.” he said, while elaborating on digitisation and how banks are catching up with it.

Charu Mathur, CDO & Head-Business Strategy of IndusInd Bank, adding to this, explained how banks have to be customer centric and not just process centric.

Technology, collaborations, personalisation will drive customer experience, say top bankers

“It is extremely important for us now to understand our clients very deeply and keep our ears close to them,” she added.

Zuzar Tinwalla and Charu Mathur were part of a fireside chat, moderated by Amol Dethe, Editor, ETBFSI.

Adopting technology: Data science, AI & ML

Banks are rapidly adopting new technologies like data and analytics, AI & ML, bots and robots. Tinwalla said, “ Anything more than 90 days is now considered obsolete.”

“We are investing capabilities in building the basic data foundation, and that’s a very critical function as you go along. And then sitting on top of that, you need an intelligent modeling capability or a data science function as we call it. Leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence, and connecting dots and making logical sense out of it is important. And then at the top, you need a delivery mechanism,” said Mathur.

Although AI will progress, it will never replace human intelligence, Tinwalla said. “What is going to be appropriate for the organisation is still a human decision,” Zuzar added.

What does the future look like?

The panelists agree that many collaborations with fintechs are going to be witnessed in the coming years.

“There’s a lot to learn from fintechs,” said Tinwalla, while explaining how fintechs complement and compete with banks.

Technology, collaborations, personalisation will drive customer experience, say top bankers

On the innovation front, Mathur said, “Personalisation aspect will play a major role in driving customer experience. We see brands like Amazon and Netflix doing it quite well. I think more and more banks will probably start delivering something on the personalisation aspect, and demonstrate their ability of understanding the customer much deeper than what we do today.”

Furthermore, she believes that composable systems, which are completely API native to the core, will allow the banks to create products and services completely tailor made to a client’s unique requirements.



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YES Bank CIO, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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Automation will become an imperative rather than a good-to-have in the next 2-3 years while hyper-personalisation will see a lot of innovations after six to eight months, according to Mahesh Ramamoorthy, Chief Information Officer, Yes Bank.

If any bank wants to get into new service or product enhancements it will need straight-through processing or zero ops. A lot of learning will come from some of the good fintech companies that have enabled themselves and have dedicated to building the scale at a very low human footprintMahesh Ramamoorthy, Chief Information Officer, YES Bank, at the Fireside Chat during ETBFSI Converge.

Hyper-personalisation

Hyper-personalisation, he said, was at a nascent stage and a lot of banks are on that journey. There are a lot used cases for hyper-personalisation such as if a customer is doing a purchase and wants money, the bank should be able to triage customer location, profile request along with banking risk and give the customer the money. Another use case is the dispute journey where the transaction could be invalid, incorrect leading to reversal. If we could service the customer using automation or give the customer the progress of the dispute giving another self-experience it would be a defining moment, he said

Saving costs

With automation banks can, on one hand, save costs on the other drive the business. It creates more availability for the customer that increases the standing of the bank in the market. Creating efficiencies in the back office leads to more business in the front office, which leads to driving growth of not just accounts but also balances, Ramamoorthy said.

Despite automation, there are instances where manual intervention is needed, such as customer queries where multiple touchpoints are needed to be addressed, the banking could pull in the information but the service would be needed to be done manually.

He said the bank is open to understanding how fintech firms create accelerated journeys, deployments, service enhancement. “We have a huge focus on partnerships. most of the automation that the fintechs have brought to the table especially when thy use latest tools there have been good learnings,” he said.

Automation’s objective is to move to zero ops, with effective means and very minimum manual intervention. identifying critical processes, to create customer experience, efficiency with a sufficient amount of risk control.



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Axis Bank EVP, BFSI News, ET BFSI

Banking & Finance

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Axis Bank‘s digital penetration has risen to over 70-73%, but it does not see a future without bank branches soon.

“It will probably take another one generation shift, for us to you know sort of planning a strategy in which there is sort of absolutely no branches. But yes, goes without saying that the intensity of branch expansion has sort of come down dramatically now from what it used to be,” Avinash Raghavendra, EVP and Head of Information Technology of Axis Bank, said at the fireside chat, with Amol Dethe, editor of ETBFSI, during the three-day event – ETBFSI Converge.

A bank branch is more like an engagement hub, where customers can come and if they have some essential queries.

“We have 4,500 plus branches and this presence and the reach actually gives visibility in the customers’ mind which any other medium or advertisement will probably not be able to do perform. Somebody taking a home loan would preferably like to deal with an entity whom they have seen. There is a new age of customers millennial customers who are thinking very differently about it, that is where all the digital property is coming into the picture,” he said.

Digital shift

5,000 sq ft to 5 inch is definitely happening, he said, adding, “If you are talking about an inflexion point in 5-6 years people will rarely visit branches. The new next generation will not like to walk into any of the branches.”

Most of the bank’s fixed deposit openings, over 70% of savings bank account openings are coming from digital channels.

“This shift has happened some years back. I mean as far as doing your fund transfer and doing your transaction kind of a thing that shift has also happened,” he said. Right now, the bank is focusing on some of the servicing issues for a lot of customers who used to come to the branch for as basic as updating Aadhar or change of address.”Avinash Raghavendra, EVP and Head of Information Technology of Axis Bank

The only customers these days who are mostly visiting the branches is someone with a locker service because that is a physical kind of a property.

On apps

Axis Bank app has a ‘Do It Yourself’ kind of a feature that allows for 250 plus transactions. “So that’s a very large number, and given the fact that our digital customer base is 73% plus, these customers are seeing traction when it comes to whatever we enable for them on the mobility side,” he said.

Credit card and debit card usage rules, which now RBI has also sort of mandated, have been incorporated inside the app, he said.

The bank engages with UIUH experts and internally has a UX team that does a lot of work.

“We do take a lot of feedback from customers in terms of what features they want. What we have seen there is 20% of features that is used by 80% of customers, so these services should be easily made available to the customers. We are also trying to come with as much of personalisation. Like reminder for FD maturity, basically, providing some sort of intelligent nudges, instead of getting them searching got those particular options,” he said.

On the super app, he said, there is very little that we are not offering in the app at the moment. “Super app is mainly for conglomerates who are doing different kinds of thing. As we are going more and more digital it is actually shaping a personal advisory kind of a function,” Raghavendra said.



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