The post-Covid world has ushered in a dynamic digital financial landscape powered by cutting-edge technologies. With the customer at the core, banking services are swiftly evolving to offer an incredibly convenient and seamless experience, accessible at the fingertips. Geographical inclusivity has been evident, with rural and remote areas of our country adopting digital banking services at an impressive speed.
Bank of India (BoI), the leading Indian public sector bank, exemplifies how a traditional institution can rapidly embrace digital solutions. Through an agile approach to development, they've transformed into a preferred banker of choice for a wide range of consumers.
It is, therefore, intriguing to know the digital transformation journey of Bank of India that was ably accomplished in partnership with IBM. In the 13th episode of BW Businessworld-IBM Masterstroke series, Sudhiranjan Padhi, Chief General Manager, Bank of India and Ranish Jaiswal, Partner & Head - FSS Public Sector with IBM Consulting, reveal the bank's digital transformation journey by answering to the contextually framed questions posed by Hoshie Ghaswalla, CEO & Managing Editor, BW Businessworld.
A synopsis:
Transitioning to offer a hyper-personalized banking experience
It is no ordinary fete for a large PSU bank to undergo transformation of a tremendous scale considering the vastness of our country coupled with constraints of various sorts. It requires immense strategic planning and precise execution while bearing in mind that the innovation wheel needs to be constantly spinning.
Bank of India entrusted this digital transformation responsibility to Sudhiranjan Padhi. With a professional career spanning 34 years at Bank of India and having worked for the bank in different geographies and divisions, he knew exactly how to go about the digitization journey in the most logical manner.
BoI was able to accomplish its goal to deliver an omnichannel, seamless banking experience, be it online, mobile, or in-person, maintaining consistency and ease of access across the channels. BoI has brought together the right blend of tech and banking services to build a robust fin-tech platform.
Padhi, at the Masterstrokes session, outlined the bank's digital mandate and transformation journey. He said, "Building a digital platform from the ground up allows for complete control over the platform's architecture, functionality, and future roadmap. It leads to a truly innovative and customer-centric digital banking experience."
"In order to deliver a seamless mobile banking experience with personalized financial insights and recommendations, we had to first build a robust platform that set a strong foundation offering scope to continuously innovate and launch services catering to every aspect of banking. Be it for people in rural or urban, and retail banking or corporate banking," Padhi added.
Padhi also stressed on the fact that BoI in its digital banking platform development gave equal importance to the development of robust banking security features (like multi-factor authentication), which are crucial to ensure the safety and protection of the customer's sensitive information and also prevent unauthorized access. "While innovation is focussed on customer's convenience and other personalized banking experience related factors, at no point was security made to compromise," said Padhi.
The digital transformation journey of BoI was cautiously done in a phased rollout manner while gathering user feedback for iterative improvements at every level of deployment. Rigorous testing tools were deployed to conduct thorough performance of the platform to ensure superior functionality, security, and performance across various scenarios, especially in remote areas where internet connectivity was very limited or barely available. The Apps were built to function in such low-connectivity areas, where the customer could still transact with minimal digital features.
BoI is highly committed to communicate to customers the new platform's features and benefits that can be easily comprehended by the lay man. To give a holistic banking experience to its customers, ensuring they were never inconvenienced at any point in time, periodic educational material and tutorials on new banking tools and safe banking processes were effectively made available across their omnichannel platform in multi-lingual content forms.
Padhi was also firm about analysing data relating to customer's pain points that went through an experienced analytics team to gain insights into customer behaviour and preferences. This could pave way for the bank's further product and service improvisations along with novel innovations.
Building unique banking functionalities for BoI
Before delving more into the detail of IBM's role in BoI's digital transformation journey, we need to really understand a key difference between digital upgradation and digital transformation. While the former is what most banks follow to stay current with technology developments, BoI was unique in adding an entirely new layer of technology that laid a foundation to building many innovative products with no binding factors.
Commenting about BoI's unique approach, Ranish Jaiswal, Partner & Head - FSS Public Sector with IBM Consulting, said, "After SBI, BOI was the second PSU bank that chose to undergo a complete end-to-end digital transformation. One major attribute about BoI's digital transformation journey is that the bank, from the word go, took a different approach to digital banking. At the core is the customer and products and services were built keeping customer's preference in mind. Instead of simply adding a digital layer on top of their existing infrastructure, they built an entirely new layer that offered scalability to a large extent."
This approach, according to Jaiswal, provided several potential opportunities for BoI. Building from scratch allows for a more flexible architecture, potentially leading to faster innovation and easier integration of new features. This also enabled the bank to leverage the latest technologies, potentially resulting in a more user-friendly and efficient experience.
"As a systems integration partner, IBM stood to this commitment of BoI to completely develop new and potentially more adaptable digital banking experience. IBM played a crucial role in connecting various software systems across BoI's 5100 branches and ATMs. Our deep knowledge of various banking software solutions including core banking systems, payment gateways, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, and other banking applications and expertise in integrating them seamlessly helped BoI in gradually transitioning into a digital powerhouse in banking," commented Jaiswal.
IBM worked closely with BoI to understand its specific technology requirements and thereby developed a comprehensive deployment strategy including financial planning, resource allocation, legal compliance, HR, and risk mitigation. IBM had strictly ensured that all BoI's technology-based solutions comply with relevant security regulations and data privacy laws, ensuring complete customer satisfaction and trust.
Reaching new frontiers in banking with Gen AI
Artificial Intelligence is at its helm, today. It is shaping the present as well as the future in very many ways and undeniably the progression into Gen AI or Generative AI has opened a new chapter in the book of revolutionizing technologies. Gen AI is now the most sought-after technology that can be deployed to automate several mundane tasks, especially in sectors like finance and banking.
"Generative AI is accelerating rapidly and the potential for enterprises is clear. However, harnessing AI in an industry as complex as financial services requires a mature approach and thoughtful framework to mitigate risk and exposure. AI will change how the financial services industry can help customers, build, and optimize efficiency and secure data. IBM's watsonx is a system that is finely crafted to render the desired matureness along with a sense of intuitiveness in a technology mainly to untangle complex situations and build and iterate on tough tasks," vouches IBM's Ranish Jaiswal.
IBM has led innovation in the financial services industry for more than 100 years, providing technology solutions that allow financial services providers to gain a competitive advantage. It has partnered with more than 90 of the world's largest banks and wealth management providers, helping them streamline their business processes and making their workflows easier. watsonx is their latest, holistic offering and banks are leveraging these products to the maximum.
According to Jaiswal, watsonx focuses facilitate agility and cost-effectiveness for banks.
on open technologies, allowing users to leverage various models and tools to address specific enterprise needs and compliance requirements. It enables businesses to unlock new value in areas that were less forayed. Opening up such a possibility allows enterprises to innovate, which further improves personalization and increased customer satisfaction. Not to forget, progressive technologies like Gen AI also provide the edge in cost, offering financial benefits.
Banking on next-gen technologies
As technology continues to evolve, we can expect even more innovative and user-friendly solutions to emerge, further transforming the way we manage our finances and perform banking transactions at the comfort of our homes. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are the order of the day. And digitally-equipped banks like BoI is exploring ways to enhance their digital assistant's services. Round the clock availability of customer service through AI chatbots and virtual assistants will be a key service offering that every bank will wish to offer. But the differentiator will be with those offering inclusivity and accessible technology in rural and semi-urban areas of the world.
AI-led personalized financial advice and product recommendations based on individual spending habits and financial goals will be a necessity, while, hyper-targeted financial products and services tailored to specific needs and preferences will have to take shape. Using behavioural biometrics, automated financial management tools coupled with scalable and flexible cloud infrastructure will facilitate agility and cost-effectiveness for banks.
Bank of India is committed to continuous innovation. They aim to significantly enhance customer satisfaction and maintain their digital relevance for centuries to come.
A journey beyond transformation
Digital transformation is just not about revolutionizing processes and products; it's a catalyst for profound personal growth. Those who actively participate in this journey emerge not only with enhanced expertise but also with a wealth of knowledge. Their passionate involvement fuels growth of not only themselves but of the many people associated with them, leaving them more experienced and well-rounded individuals. These attributes hold true to both Sudhiranjan Padhi and Ranish Jaiswal.
Closing the discussion on a lighter note, Hoshie Ghaswalla asked Padhi and Jaiswal what would they have otherwise chosen their careers to be instead of fore fronting tech. Padhi, modestly, expressed that he would have been a teacher or mentor (in banking probably) and Jaiswal believed he would have found his feet in the armed forces serving our country with pride.
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