Banking to be more experience oriented in the future, say experts

Banking, in the future would become more experience oriented for customers rather than transactional, according to the panel on banks of the future.

Discussing how the bank of the future would look like, Deepak Sharma Chief Digital Officer, Kotak Mahindra Bank said that there were three Indias within the same India and each displayed different banking behaviour- be it the millennial Indian, metro women or semi-urban.

Though human and technology interfaces would exist side by side, they would be integrated to ensure the customer has more say in the way he did banking, the panel felt.

Bots will replace humans and functions such as credit, underwriting besides capturing intent of fraud risk would be increasingly done using AI and machine learning, Sharma said, adding that more activities would be outsourced to Fintech/ecommerce and data companies with revenue sharing with the bank functioning more like a consumer company.

Ravi Narayanan, Country Head Branch Banking and Retail Trade Fx, HDFC Bank said that the customer wants to be in control of the time, place and the manner in which he wants to do banking. Culturally, touch and feel banking will remain and the branch  would become a space for conversation rather than transaction. The banker will continue to remain personal in the future, he said.

Rishi Gupta, MD & CEO Fino Payments Bank said that a lot of hand holding of the mass market customer would be required adding that the choice of using physical or digital channel should finally rest with the customer. He emphasised that distribution was the key whether it was tying up with oil marketing companies to use their petrol pumps, doorstep banking or coming up with sachet products such as 1-month insurance. Distribution, Technology and Partnership would be the key to success for new age banks he felt, adding that security features in digital banking had to be enhanced.

Baskar Babu, MD & CEO, Suryoday Small Finance Bank said that people would expect more transparency from banks going forward. He added that simplicity of products and providing an experience would prevail over the old school lethargic banking (done by commercial banks which operated mainly through branches).

The panel summed up that the future of banking was ‘advantage customer’.