In its efforts to focus on retail banking and to achieve growth, SVC Bank, the leading cooperative bank in the country, is taking competition seriously and working our strategies to counter the competition. The bank’s MD Ajit E. Venugopalan, tells Banking Frontiers that the bank has realized that innovative products, new initiatives and new propositions are the need of the hour and in this context, it has set up a products and segments team, constituting people who are working on all the existing product alignments and trying to make the products best in the market. One of the most important pillars among the identified pillars of growth – Product/Policy/Process Alignment – ensures that a team’s role covers the entire product management of the existing products range and derives operational efficiency and features out of the existing products, while simultaneously working on new product ideas also, says he. “So, we have arrived at the right split between the manufacturing or strategy functions (manufacturer) and the business functions (seller). The products and segments team is responsible for product development, insight research, market alignment and innovation, while the retail distribution team will be the carriers of this good work, responsible for incremental business, strategies around developing business, and strategies around expanding channels,” Venugopalan explains.
A novel concept that is part of this strategy is segmenting, he continues, stating the concept has actually evolved over a period of time – that the same product cannot be sold to all the people and unless there is product differentiation – different products for different segments of customers – the products may not attract attention.
Venugopalan also says segmentation is a core formula that the bank has used and it plays a very important role in its day to day banking activities. “In fact, one of the most important pillars is segmented offerings. Differentiation could be in products, features, pricing, policy and servicing. So, for an HNI customer, I must have a dedicated body or team to meet his requirements. For a small customer, a young customer or a tech savvy customer, the main thrust is actually on digital banking so that the customer can move to this channel and do the transactions online without the help of a banking staff,” says he.
– Manoj Agrawal, Group Editor, [email protected]
