Going digital with inhouse software
H.P. Singh, chairman and MD, Satin Creditcare Network, speaks about the recent technological breakthroughs the NBFC-MFI has achieved:
Satin Creditcare Network, one of India’s leading NBFC-MFIs, offers income generation l oans (IGL) to women entrepreneurs and product financing, providing opportunities to 3.6 million low-income clients. It also lends to MSMEs and offers housing finance through its subsidiaries. The company has a strong growing distribution network of more than 1300 branches spread across 22 states and union territories. Notable among its technology achievements is the integration of a robust Information Security Management System (ISMS) in its business processes.
OWN HRMS SUITE
One of the recent technology rollouts has been an in-house developed suite of Human Resources Management System (HRMS) - ‘Satin ESS’. The company’s chairman and MD H.P. Singh says the system has been built with the latest technology stack using concept of micro-services that makes it more agile, scalable and flexible, which leads to superior performance. We have developed both”a mobile application and a web application, which are available on Google Play Store (for Android users) and Apple App Store (for iPhone users). The system has features like attendance and branch visit, leave management, employee self-portal, reports, employee performance management, employee exit, HR admin portal, employee creation and confirmation and employee dashboard.”
LMS FOR MSME BUSINESS
The company has also launched its own Learning Management System for MSMEs, which has a web portal for partner/ customer, lead generation module, credit bureau integration, customer psychometric evaluation, loan origination system, CRM analysis, underwriting and credit analysis, legal and technical evaluation workflow, loan processing and disbursement, digital e-NACH, SMS/email notifications on customer touch points and a fully integrated accounting module. The company added an eLearning module, which was developed during the lockdown. It has eLearning modules for all employees covering the behavior and functional aspects.
ENHANCING APPLICATION
Satin Creditcare has ongoing enhancements in the current application landscape. It has a fortnightly release cycle and all the developments are in-house. Singh says the company deploys 2 releases in a month wherein all enhancements and new features developed are delivered. “On an average we have around 50-60 small/big feature enhancements each month. All these initiatives have helped us to save cost as well as improve our operational efficiency,” he adds.
BETTER CONTROL, CONNECT
Satin Creditcare is not able leverage digital medium for client acquisition in view of the nature of its business, but it uses the medium in facilitating and enhancing customer experience. It is now focused on taking robust digital technology to the last mile as a strategic initiative. Singh explains: “The aim is to overcome the challenges of intense and growing competition, besides increasing productivity and reducing margins by creating a unique competitive advantage to boost profitability. Business transformation through digitization has powered a major leap in the company’s journey to maximize the reach to the financially excluded population at the bottom of the pyramid and help them enhance their livelihood.”
He also says information security and client confidentiality are part of the cornerstones of the company’s strategic objectives. This approach also ensures that a high standard of security is maintained by employees supported by IT systems and processes throughout the organization.
Satin Creditcare is known to be a pioneer in bringing new initiatives in its systems and processes, which help in establishing better control and connect. Singh maintains that technology will continue to be at the helm of the company’s operations. “Digital technology is not only robust and secure, it also makes several checks to mitigate or negate the risks of a fraud, leading to more transparency. Technology will be leveraged to enhance business effectiveness and impact,” says Singh.
INSIGHTS FROM DASHBOARDS
Singh believes that the future of lending lies in leveraging innovative technologies that preclude human intervention. Its core state-of-the-art Loan Management System (LMS) product has been built with the latest technology stack making the product more agile, scalable and flexible. Its digital platform is completely online with realtime systems, which provide support to the end-to-end lending process. Singh claims this digital transformation has put the company ahead of the curve to better respond to the ever-changing business
scenarios. The system used is equipped with comprehensive reporting capabilities, audit trails and logs, detailed information about loan histories, transaction reports, required decision-making reports and numerous management analysis and real-time dashboards. Furthermore, the company is also implementing Tableau, which will further enhance the analytics capability, which the company already has from the perspective of empowering the business wherein they analyze data with intuitive drag and drop insight.
Singh says these initiatives are helping the company reduce operational costs over a period and gain deeper insights through real-time dashboards. “It is also helping track business Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) every 2 minutes, thereby augmenting efficiencies. Investors as well as other stakeholders have responded positivity to this new technological transformation at Satin Creditcare,” says he.
POST-LOAN SERVICES APP
Satin Creditcare recently l aunched a customer service application which is a one-stop solution for clients for all their post-loan services. Benchmarked against the best in the industry, the app comes with a clean, simple user interface, a design to deliver an excellent user experience and intuitive navigation.
Singh says with this application the clients can view and manage their active loans, make payments and download financial statements on-the-go, access information on closed loans and investments, view their statements and more, pay EMIs, part pre-pay or foreclose loans and access information on future payments through the app itself, receive notifications for upcoming EMIs / post collection digital confirmation and view pre-approved offers and get product information.
The company is also developing a feature in this application for the clients wherein they are able to see their credit bureau score and generate a detailed report.
MAJOR VENDORS
The core infrastructure of the company is hosted at Mumbai / Hyderabad. CtrlS is providing data center services, Dell server / storage hardware, Google GCP Cloud Platform for select application hosting and VMWare virtualization.
CAPEX, OPEX
Capital and operational expenditure is used to fuel the digital initiatives and the business growth in the company. “On an average, each year our capex is around `80 million and opex `85 million,” says Singh.
The company has its own IT development center and all the technology initiatives are developed in-house. There is a 128-member strong IT team spread across India. Out of this, approximately 30% resources are in the IT software development team. iBall and Lenovo tablets have been provided to the 10,000+ workforce to smoothly facilitate collections and onboarding of new clients. It also uses an MDM on these devices which help it to monitor, manage, secure and control any activity on the tab through a centralized console.
SOCIAL MEDIA AS TOOL
Satin Creditcare does not need marketing through social media per se, since its business is a high touch model based on client connecting. Singh, however, says the company is using social media as a tool to interact with its internal as well as external stakeholders and share the latest updates in business.
POST COVID-19 PLANS
No doubt, technology and digitization have emerged as powerful drivers in the company for transforming business processes, enabling internal/external stakeholders with insightful information at the right time in order to make informed decisions, creating competitive advantages and elevating consumer experience. Singh says the company is focused on taking robust digital technology to the last mile as a strategic initiative. The aim is to overcome the challenges of intense and growing competition, besides increasing productivity and reducing margins by creating a unique competitive advantage to boost profitability. He claims business transformation through digitization has powered a major leap in the journey to maximize reach to the financially excluded population at the bottom of the pyramid and help them enhance their livelihood.
The Indian NBFC ecosystem is forced to take up major shifts in working practices and transforming the conventional industry into one beyond recognition, especially in the light of the aftereffects of the pandemic. Since the last few months, majority of the workforce has transitioned to working from home, extensively leveraging the already set cloud infrastructure services which were being used extensively by the users for collaboration and accessing of core applications. Says Singh: “We have also delivered many new technology initiatives during the lockdown period to support the changing dynamics of the business. Being a pioneer in cashless collection, we quickly launched the digital collections in the current lock down situation as well. Digital collections have seen a tremendous traction and scale.”
Satin Creditcare’s strategy towards digital technology initiative is driven by certain core principles. Singh outlines these: “These include replace legacy systems, establish strong process controls, enable workflows to lower costs through faster turnaround times and increased accuracy, have real-time view of business to improve the speed and accuracy of decision-making, optimize customer value through a holistic technology initiative, target customers with the right offers at the right time with the right channel to increase efficiency as well as productivity and enable centralized governance mechanism. Old technology slows innovation and decreases productivity, so our endeavor is to develop all such initiatives in-house.”.