Digital embraces Archaeological Tourism

Chief Digital Officers are leading tremendous transformation initiatives. Five CDOs reveal their fascinating journey and their ambitious goals:

Vishal Bhatia, CDO, Canara Bank, highlights the bank's digital objectives and initiatives:

Smriti Pandey: Since when are you a Chief Digital Officer? Vishal Bhatia:

I joined Canara Bank in Sep 2023 as a Chief Digital Officer.

Briefly describe your first major project as CDO. (up to 100 words)

The first major project as a CDO was launching digital lending products across Retail, Agri, MSME and Corporate Loans.

It is a DIY journey available across the ail app, NetBanking, QR based, and branch-assisted. Products have been deployed via the agile approach and built on API based with scalable microservices containerbased architecture and extensively integrated with the ULI (Unified Lending Interface) framework.

The first product launched was for women self-help groups (SHGs) across the country, which have about 100 million women as members, have had a tough time opening bank accounts as it required a few weeks and humongous paperwork. Canara Bank collaborated with the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) to come out with an innovative solution which will help in opening bank accounts of SHGs in 15 minutes and reduce the turnaround time for loans for SHG members to just 24 hours from 3-4 weeks earlier.

Another flagship product launched for our farmers is the Kisan Credit Card. It is an STP journey, and disbursement happens within a few minutes. We have launched many more value-added digital lending products for our customers, and many are on the roadmap.

Briefly describe one experimental/ innovative project that you have recently completed or are in the process of completing, that is associated with a new technology or new financial products. What is its expected impact?