Crafting Better Customer Journeys Through Digital Banking

Delivering digital banking services to its customers' fingertips comes with its own challenges and the banks have had to address them to keep up with the times and competition from the fintechs

PIGGYBACKING on the push Covid-19 gave to digital transformation over the last two years, most banks have moved fast to strategise and establish a connect with their customers remotely via the digital medium. This has happened with such vigour that multiple financial entities from the country today conduct over 90 per cent of their transactions through digital and mobile platforms. Similar trends have been observed with other large banks, including the State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and even HDFC Bank.

But bringing digital banking services to its customers' fingertips comes with its own challenges and the banks have had to address them to keep up with the times and competition from the fintechs. And it has been crucial for the banks to get the basics right before delving into leveraging cutting-edge tech like AI/ML.

While big tech companies such as Microsoft and IBM along with fintechs have mobilised resources to innovate and reach the masses, banks with their old ways have had to adapt and evolve to keep up. This journey for banks began with moving away from JVM structures and web app servers and figuring out the way onto cloud-native architecture. This has been important for the banks in order to deliver experiences that the customers love. To make this happen, they have had to look into Flutter and React Native platforms amongst others.

"Digital experience and customer experience is going to be very important for banks moving forward. And they will invest in these technologies," says Rishi Aurora, Senior Partner & Financial Services Sector Leader at IBM.