Experiential Digital Done Right

Banking Frontiers organized a panel discussion in Kochi, Kerala with senior executives from banks and NBFCs. Edited excerpts:

Babu: How has the transformation been from the legacy system to the new age digital platform?

Murali: Our journey has been from a legacy system to a cloud-based system. In my opinion, moving to the cloud should yield definite business benefits. Reduction of cost of the data centre should not be the only reason to move to the cloud as cloud space is not cheap either. Hence, good planning is required.

Babu: How has been your experience in the transformation because your bank was the first to implement a core banking system?

Sony: Not just core banking, we were the first bank to go live in UPI also which was challenging. Today it is easier to get the appropriate funds for innovation and taking banks forward. Our customer focus innovations are now appreciated by one and all. One such example is E-lock which is a single on-off switch for all digital debits. We talk to customers to get to the root of the problem. Which we are trying to solve using the 'new and renew' process.

KNC Nair: For the growth of the bank, customer should be offered unique products and services. We wanted to make disbursing gold loans as easy as drawing money from ATM. After exploring and experimenting we came up with a core banking solution which was developed internally and disburse the gold loan in 15 minutes.

During demonetization, we had another challenge as we deal with cash. Our in-house team came to the rescue and we could scale up the online banking. For effective seamless working, the existing infrastructure has to be re-engineered.

George: Digital transformation cannot be done overnight. Even though we are only 6 years old, certain applications are old. Instead of throwing away the whole legacy system, one can build an ecosystem around it. Or fintech partnerships can be sought.