Satish Utekar, FCBA Jury Member, spoke on the topic of Digital Transformation at the FCBA 2024 conference at Lucknow. Edited excerpts:
Let us understand what is digitalization. It is a process of using digital technologies to transform how banks operate and provide services. The first level of BPR is most important and today we are into third or fourth level of BPR. I was going through the presentation of many of the IT companies here. There are 3 questions to ask – (i) whether we are really capable of adopting IT (ii) whether we have taken this technology to our staff (iii) whether the technology has been understood by the customers.
We are finding it difficult to mobilize deposits because the new generation has a bigger appetite for risk management. They are ready to take more risk and they are investing into stocks as they feel that there is a good return on the stock. Are we changing ourselves to that environment, are we are having an approach for our customers, are we are servicing them properly or not?
I personally feel as a banker that it is not the yield or the interest on how much we are offering to the investor or how much we are charging to the customers. Customers are expecting immediate services – they want a decision immediately to be given. So that is what is the requirement, and technology can do that. It should reach to the customers.
You can increase your profit by using technology – that is most important. So how can we increase profits? We can reduce operational costs. Technology can enable you to reduce your per transaction cost. That is what should be the aim for technology. Technology should be for customer services, customer centric approach and reducing transition cost and per employee business should increase.
Proper risk management is possible only if we have technology. RBI is asking us to have a risk-based audit and technology can definitely add value.
Digital transformation should add value to the business. Should ALM be used only for the regulatory compliances or should it be used for the pricing policy also, for changing portfolio maturity pattern? At the end of the day, with technology and digital transformation, if you want a success, awareness creation to your staff, empowering your staff, and then taking forward to the customer, that is most important with the maximum use of the technology availability – that is most important.
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